Twitter isn't disclosing how much activity it drummed up during last night's hurricane pinnacle, but tweet-tracking site Topsy has the goods. There were a lot of Sandy tweets. Millions.
Based only on dispatches that used the #sandy or #hurricanesandy hashtags (that's excluding a lot of chatter), Topsy-which has access to the same analytic tools Twitter uses-counted three million mentions. Again, that's excluding everything hurricane-related that didn't use a hashtag. There was also a definite highpoint-quantitatively speaking-of the crisis coverage:
Twitter activity peaked at more than 290K mentions, around the time when seawater began entering subway tunnels under the East River.
It makes sense that one of the most terrifying possible moments would be one of the most disseminated. That's part of why Twitter exists, all notes of comfort and cooperation aside.