On Wednesday morning at 6 AM, I heard crackling thunder RIGHT after flashes of lightning. I popped out of bed knowing that my computer was on, stuff was open and I didn't want to fry everything. I ran upstairs and shut down. The rain was driving sideways on my house and the few windows that were open were letting in this storm. I closed everything and went back to bed. When I woke, everything was chaos. Cars blaring their horns, not knowing as I didn't, that trees were lying across many streets. My neighborhood is made up of 100 year old Victorian homes and many 100 year old Victorian Trees. In the summer they are a natural umbrella from the sun, and in the fall, leaves never stop coming down. As it turns out, it was a tornado that started in Bay Ridge, stopped off in Sunset Park and danced across Victorian Flatbush.
The twister was estimated to have winds of between 111-135 miles an hour. The tornado was a Category 2 on the 0-5 classification scale used by the weather service, in which 5 is the most powerful.
It was the first tornado to hit Brooklyn since modern record keeping began in 1950.
My familyand I took a walk mid morning to see the damage and what we saw was amazing. The NEXT block north, a beautiful one, lost tons of these trees and the cars beneath them. We were lucky but many were not. Today the hum of chainsaws are a welcome sound.
