New York:
A brief but fierce storm roared through New York City on Thursday evening, throwing down trees like sticks, crippling debris-strewn neighborhoods in Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island, disrupting commuter rail service and killing at least one person.
The storm and its aftereffects bore many of the hallmarks of a tornado, with the tops of countless trees sheared off and roofs blown off houses, but National Weather Service officials were still analyzing data to determine whether it should be classified as one.
The fast-moving storm, with winds estimated at 60 to 80 miles an hour, caused widespread damage. There were numerous reports of small fires, power failures and damage to homes, stores and vehicles.
Robert Holden, president of the Juniper Park Civic Association, a community group in Middle Village, Queens, somberly looked over the damage as he walked through the storm-ravaged neighborhood.
"It almost brought me to tears," Holden said. "Every block, two, three trees are down into houses, smashed into cars. There's gridlock. There's debris everywhere."
The winds ripped some trees out of sidewalks and blew them 30 to 40 feet, he said, knocking out electricity as they landed on power lines.
"It wasn't the rain, but there was tremendous wind," he said. "It didn't last very long. A few minutes, it seemed like."
A woman was killed when a tree fell on her car about 6:50 pm on the Grand Central Parkway near Jewel Avenue in Queens. The police said the woman, whom they identified as Iline Leuakis, a 30-year-old resident of Mechanicsburg, Pa., had pulled her car, a 2010 Lexus sedan, to the side of the parkway.
They said a passenger, a 60-year-old man, had minor injuries.
Trees were down on every street in the adjacent neighborhood, blocking traffic and preventing residents from getting in or out of their homes.
The worst of the storm started about 5 pm, as a warm front from the south approached New York City. A line of thunderstorms moved through, intensifying as they reached the shore, causing winds to rotate within a small area, a characteristic that prompts a tornado warning, according to John Murray, a National Weather Service meteorologist.
The storm tore through Staten Island, then Brooklyn, hitting Park Slope and Bedford-Stuyvesant hard. It then moved into Queens, striking hard at Middle Village, Forest Hills and Bayside.
Consolidated Edison reported just before 8 pm that more than 25,000 customers were without power in Queens, and more than 5,000 customers on Staten Island experienced power failures. Partial building collapses were reported in at least two locations in Queens -- on Roosevelt Avenue and on Yellowstone Boulevard -- and at least two in Brooklyn, on Hamilton and Fourth Avenues.
Bus and car traffic was reported at a standstill through much of the hardest-hit areas.
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg surveyed storm damage at 111th Street and 52nd Avenue in Corona, Queens, before a planned event in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park. He said that most people should have power restored by morning and that while there may have been some damage to school buildings, he expected all schools to be open on Friday.
"While it may be an act of God, it doesn't make it any easier for us," Mr Bloomberg said. "The good news is that most people were safe, just annoyed -- traffic being bad, or a tree coming down in their yard."
Fallen trees disrupted Long Island Rail Road service in and out of the city, forcing officials to close down service from Pennsylvania Station on the L.I.R.R. because of overcrowding there. Commuters whose trains home were canceled flooded into the subway seeking other routes to Queens.
Sal Arena, a Metropolitan Transportation Authority spokesman, said that test trains on the tracks between Penn Station and the Jamaica station had encountered more debris than anticipated, and service from Penn Station remained suspended at 11:30 pm. There was limited service from Jamaica and the Atlantic Avenue terminal in Brooklyn to points east.
L.I.R.R. officials anticipated restoring service into and out of Penn Station for the Friday morning rush, though they expected delays. However, service was not expected to be restored on the Port Washington branch until later.
The transportation agency also said that service was suspended on the No. 7 subway train, which runs above ground in northern Queens, for a couple of hours.
On Seventh Avenue near 34th street, dozens of people waited in a block long taxi line near Penn Station. Across Seventh Avenue from the station, a smaller group of people tried to hail taxis, while police officer shouted at livery-car and gypsy-cab drivers who tried to pick up passengers, instructing them to keep moving.
The last tornado in New York City hit the Bronx on July 25, when winds of 100 mph uprooted trees and road signs. The one before that was in 2007, in Sunset Park and Bay Ridge, Brooklyn.
On Staten Island, Lori Kruesi, a secretary to a judge, was driving from the ferry to her home in the Livingston neighborhood when the storm hit. The damage made it difficult to return to her house, where she was afraid her daughter was enduring the storm all alone.
"There are 8 to 10 streets I can turn up to get to where I live, and every single street had a downed tree, or several downed trees or downed power lines. We circled a block that was clear two minutes before, and when we came back around there was a huge tree that hadn't been there the first time," she said. Noting the pools of water on the roads, she added, "Thank goodness we have an S.U.V."
In Park Slope, Brooklyn, the storm hurtled down Fifth Avenue, carrying lumber and trash cans along for the ride and leaving a path of destruction in its wake.
Chrystal Prather, 32, a graphic novelist, was in a cafe on Fifth Avenue near Third Street when she saw the storm coming and ducked into the doorway. "The wind was so hard it was blowing the door back and forth," Ms Prather said. "We tried to leave, but the winds pushed us back." She watched chunks of trees and plates from an antique store fly by like something out of a movie.
Farther north, at Fifth Avenue and Baltic Street, where side streets were blocked by fallen trees, impromptu work crews sprang up to move trees and lift sheets of screw-studded plywood fence. Eve Cantler, a high school junior, led one.
"I knew this was nothing compared to Katrina," she said, referring to the hurricane, "but this is like the Park Slope mini-version. I thought I should do what I could to help out."
The storm and its aftereffects bore many of the hallmarks of a tornado, with the tops of countless trees sheared off and roofs blown off houses, but National Weather Service officials were still analyzing data to determine whether it should be classified as one.
The fast-moving storm, with winds estimated at 60 to 80 miles an hour, caused widespread damage. There were numerous reports of small fires, power failures and damage to homes, stores and vehicles.
Robert Holden, president of the Juniper Park Civic Association, a community group in Middle Village, Queens, somberly looked over the damage as he walked through the storm-ravaged neighborhood.
"It almost brought me to tears," Holden said. "Every block, two, three trees are down into houses, smashed into cars. There's gridlock. There's debris everywhere."
The winds ripped some trees out of sidewalks and blew them 30 to 40 feet, he said, knocking out electricity as they landed on power lines.
"It wasn't the rain, but there was tremendous wind," he said. "It didn't last very long. A few minutes, it seemed like."
A woman was killed when a tree fell on her car about 6:50 pm on the Grand Central Parkway near Jewel Avenue in Queens. The police said the woman, whom they identified as Iline Leuakis, a 30-year-old resident of Mechanicsburg, Pa., had pulled her car, a 2010 Lexus sedan, to the side of the parkway.
They said a passenger, a 60-year-old man, had minor injuries.
Trees were down on every street in the adjacent neighborhood, blocking traffic and preventing residents from getting in or out of their homes.
The worst of the storm started about 5 pm, as a warm front from the south approached New York City. A line of thunderstorms moved through, intensifying as they reached the shore, causing winds to rotate within a small area, a characteristic that prompts a tornado warning, according to John Murray, a National Weather Service meteorologist.
The storm tore through Staten Island, then Brooklyn, hitting Park Slope and Bedford-Stuyvesant hard. It then moved into Queens, striking hard at Middle Village, Forest Hills and Bayside.
Consolidated Edison reported just before 8 pm that more than 25,000 customers were without power in Queens, and more than 5,000 customers on Staten Island experienced power failures. Partial building collapses were reported in at least two locations in Queens -- on Roosevelt Avenue and on Yellowstone Boulevard -- and at least two in Brooklyn, on Hamilton and Fourth Avenues.
Bus and car traffic was reported at a standstill through much of the hardest-hit areas.
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg surveyed storm damage at 111th Street and 52nd Avenue in Corona, Queens, before a planned event in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park. He said that most people should have power restored by morning and that while there may have been some damage to school buildings, he expected all schools to be open on Friday.
"While it may be an act of God, it doesn't make it any easier for us," Mr Bloomberg said. "The good news is that most people were safe, just annoyed -- traffic being bad, or a tree coming down in their yard."
Fallen trees disrupted Long Island Rail Road service in and out of the city, forcing officials to close down service from Pennsylvania Station on the L.I.R.R. because of overcrowding there. Commuters whose trains home were canceled flooded into the subway seeking other routes to Queens.
Sal Arena, a Metropolitan Transportation Authority spokesman, said that test trains on the tracks between Penn Station and the Jamaica station had encountered more debris than anticipated, and service from Penn Station remained suspended at 11:30 pm. There was limited service from Jamaica and the Atlantic Avenue terminal in Brooklyn to points east.
L.I.R.R. officials anticipated restoring service into and out of Penn Station for the Friday morning rush, though they expected delays. However, service was not expected to be restored on the Port Washington branch until later.
The transportation agency also said that service was suspended on the No. 7 subway train, which runs above ground in northern Queens, for a couple of hours.
On Seventh Avenue near 34th street, dozens of people waited in a block long taxi line near Penn Station. Across Seventh Avenue from the station, a smaller group of people tried to hail taxis, while police officer shouted at livery-car and gypsy-cab drivers who tried to pick up passengers, instructing them to keep moving.
The last tornado in New York City hit the Bronx on July 25, when winds of 100 mph uprooted trees and road signs. The one before that was in 2007, in Sunset Park and Bay Ridge, Brooklyn.
On Staten Island, Lori Kruesi, a secretary to a judge, was driving from the ferry to her home in the Livingston neighborhood when the storm hit. The damage made it difficult to return to her house, where she was afraid her daughter was enduring the storm all alone.
"There are 8 to 10 streets I can turn up to get to where I live, and every single street had a downed tree, or several downed trees or downed power lines. We circled a block that was clear two minutes before, and when we came back around there was a huge tree that hadn't been there the first time," she said. Noting the pools of water on the roads, she added, "Thank goodness we have an S.U.V."
In Park Slope, Brooklyn, the storm hurtled down Fifth Avenue, carrying lumber and trash cans along for the ride and leaving a path of destruction in its wake.
Chrystal Prather, 32, a graphic novelist, was in a cafe on Fifth Avenue near Third Street when she saw the storm coming and ducked into the doorway. "The wind was so hard it was blowing the door back and forth," Ms Prather said. "We tried to leave, but the winds pushed us back." She watched chunks of trees and plates from an antique store fly by like something out of a movie.
Farther north, at Fifth Avenue and Baltic Street, where side streets were blocked by fallen trees, impromptu work crews sprang up to move trees and lift sheets of screw-studded plywood fence. Eve Cantler, a high school junior, led one.
"I knew this was nothing compared to Katrina," she said, referring to the hurricane, "but this is like the Park Slope mini-version. I thought I should do what I could to help out."
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