The storm lasted maybe an hour but it was very intense and thunder and lightening woke many Brooklynites. It managed to unleash a tornado that touched Staten Island, but whipped through
southwestern Brooklyn at breakneck speed with winds going 135 miles an hour.

This all happened before the morning rush hour and managed to paralyze the transit system, flooding tracks, tunnels, and major thoroughfares.

In Park Slope, there was gushing water everywhere. Met Food on Seventh Avenue near 2nd Street was filled with water, as was their basement. The storm wreaked havoc all over the Slope. Water filled  the Grand Army Plaza train station making it look, one friend told me, "like there had been a mudslide."

All day, readers sent pictures from Bay Ridge which looked like a major disaster area with fallen trees, wrecked cars, broken windows and damaged  buidlings. Ditmas Park also had many fallen trees and building damage.

By 9 am it was a bright sunny day and if you weren’t reading a blog or listening to the news you might not have known that there had been a serious storm.

OTBKB readers who left early for the subway were shocked to find that the trains weren’t running. Many people just gave up and stayed home. Others waited hours for trains. One reader did get a train out of Grand Army Plaza, after waiting an hour, but it only went to Atlantic Avenue, where she waited for a R train and then gave up.