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Well, that was pretty crazy. (Or as the videographer in the second video on the jump said, “Holy Shit!”) It only lasted a few minutes, but sometime around 5:30 p.m. yesterday a small tornado touched down in Brownstone Brooklyn, wreaking havoc on many trees, cars and houses and leaving other spots virtually untouched. We took a walk around Clinton Hill in the aftermath and have included a lot of the photos we took along with a bunch sent in by readers. Thanks so much to everyone for sending them in.
L.I.R.R. Works to Restore Most Commuter Service [NY Times]
Killer Storm Batters New York [NY Post]
Powerful Storm Causes Damage in Minutes [NY Daily News]
Brooklynites Band Together After Storm [NY Daily News]



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  1. You know, traffic engineers used to call trees FHOs (Fixed hazardous Objects) and hated having them on street sides (and successfully prevented them for decades.) Now they may start calling them Falling Hazardous Objects and clamor for their removal again. Hope not.

  2. Hope everyone is ok, frankly I’m sorry I missed it! I was teaching a class at the operating engineer’s union, deep in the bowels of a building, and didn’t hear a damn thing! I came out it was practically dry. The only thing I noticed was a lot of bikes on the train. When I got off the F at 15th Street, nothing unusual except Prospect Expressway backed up. Nothing unusual on the block either.

  3. cmu, sorry to hear about the damage. Hope all works out well for you.

    Tangentally, what good is having insurance if we are unwilling to use it, because the %*#(*$& insurance company will up the premiums? So we pay out of pocket for things like this. Dennis Haysbert and Allstate commericials LIE to us!

  4. Found out my deductible is 500 so have put in a claim. Anyone know if that’s a red flag to the insurance company of any kind? Like car insurance where they cancel you if you putin a claim? Allstate.

  5. Should have mentioned, sorry to all those with damage, as well as to all the tree. Hope the insurance companies do the right things.

    BTW, anyone know what kind of trees got hit the hardest? I’m wondering if most were pear and maples trees; they grow fast end up really unstable when they get big. Our block is planting a few trees; want to make sure we don’t plant ones that are going to cause trouble later.

  6. Thanks much, snappy! Remarkably clean all things considered, apparently a 10′ x 18′ section of what looks now like heavy tar paper (I know it’s more than that) peeled off leaving the deck uncovered. Split nicely into a few large fragments and is now in neighbor’s (luckily) concreted backyard. Roofer I hired will clean it up too, and that’s fine with neighbor (also luckily).

  7. Hmmm…We’re about half a mile south from the Flatbush corridor. So maybe a smallish tornado embedded within the squall line moved up Flatbush, and everyone else just got hit by the squall line. That would make sense, because we didn’t have much tree damage. Just a minute or two of intense straight line winds/downdrafts. We were far enough away that we wouldn’t have heard the roar of a small tornado given all the other storm noise, buildings, etc.

    Everything did turn this really intense green just before it hit; the only time I’ve seen it exactly like that was when I was in the vicinity of a tornado.

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