'Sandy' Videos Spur Major Interest

The superstorm Sandy inflicted serious damage to the east coast of the United States this week, drawing attention and interest from all over. In the United States, "Hurricane Sandy" was YouTube's top rising search of the past seven days as residents in affected areas as well as those beyond, sought out information as well as bystander footage of the disaster.

Over 30,000 videos mentioning "Sandy" were uploaded Monday alone and these and other videos from this week have been viewed tens of millions of times.

With over 5 million views in just 2 days, the most-watched video from the storm is the footage of the power plant explosion in lower Manhattan that left much of the city in the dark.



The Weather Channel livestreamed their forecasts of the storm on YouTube as it battered the East coast, reaching 13 million livestream views over the course of their coverage.

Other popular videos include footage of flooding in New York and the rescue of passengers from the HMS Bounty.

More footage at CitizenTube


Interest in "Hurricane" searches Monday were at their highest since 2008 (as far as our records go back). The most recent search interest spike prior to this was last summer, when Hurricane Irene threatened the east coast as indicated in the chart below: