Not in Kansas, Toto: Possible tornado strikes NYC

One person died when her car was crushed by a falling tree, and over 30,000 people are without electricity this morning after a thunderstorm packing 100-miles-per-hour winds tore through Queens, Staten Island, and Brooklyn yesterday. (See NY1 for a fuller report.) All evening, NY1 News television channel was playing reports of people running for their lives as trees fell toward them, of drivers running from their cars after the wind smashed their car into another, for fear that the situation might become even more life-threatening, of a storm that came in so quickly that homes were flooded in the minutes that it took for the residents to close the windows.

We're pretty lucky that the worst of the damage missed our own neighborhood, leaving only a downed tree or two and lots of branches on the ground. We're also lucky to be living in a neighborhood in which the electric power lines are buried underground, so we never lost electric power. But it's going to be a good long time before some neighborhoods get back to normal. I gather that many people lost their cars to falling trees, and some people may even lose their houses due to damage too extensive to repair.

May the rest of the year be a good one for all, and a better one for those who've suffered illness, tragedy, and/or disaster.