A tornado touched down this evening, causing widespread reports of destruction on Twitter. (And, reportedly, some destruction in Brooklyn.) Scary! Let's survey the damage.

The Tornado touched down around 5:30pm, sparking chaos, strong rain, and thousands of tweets. The Village Voice's Running Scared blog has a good round-up of citizen journalists reporting from the scene of the Tornado.

Including:

  • The tornado blew out the window of NYU Local founder Cody Brown!
  • Here is a good video from inside the tornado, at Neighborhoodr.
  • And a report from yours truly, who was hanging out at his house in South Brooklyn when the tornado struck:

  • I was sitting at my desk, silently weeping because I had to start blogging in 15 minutes and I had nothing to write about. Then I looked out the window and the sky darkened. The wind started roaring and a giant tree branch fell into my patio. It was scary and maybe lasted three minutes.

  • The Times reports that a lot of trains are delayed, and a tree fell on a car.
  • NBC New York reports one person was killed by a falling tree. No other injuries reported.
  • And here's an amazing video of the storm rolling through Brooklyn:

Whew. Congrats, New York. We survived a tornado!

[Picture of Park Slope tornado damage via [Pic Frog. We originally had this awesome picture of a tornado by the Statue of Liberty. That was from 1979. Whoops.]