This hurricane may go down in history as #Sandy, known as much for its historic impact on social media as it is for its devastating effects on the East Coast.

While it may be some time before there are definitive social media stats, here are some pretty staggering initial numbers:

• YouTube: 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.
• Twitter: From Monday to Tuesday #Sandy had more than 4 million mentions by almost 400,000 unique sources on Twitter according to Radian6. Mentions of #Sandy had a potential reach of more than 3 billion Twitter followers.
• Facebook: Not surprisingly, Hurricane Sandy was the top phrase on Facebook Monday. In fact, Facebook released statistics Tuesday that showed that Hurricane Sandy is now the second-most talked about event on Facebook this year, with the Super Bowl coming in first. According to Facebook’s Talk Meter, the site’s measurement of overall chatter around an event on a 10-point scale, Sandy ranks at an 8.34.
• Instagram: There were more than 411,000 photos posted with either #sandy, #hurricanesandy or #Frankenstorm as of Monday afternoon and as the storm made landfall it increased to 10 pictures per second being posted.

Public officials and government agencies like FEMA embraced social media to a greater degree than ever as a way to get word out. And media outlets turned to viewer-submitted images to fill in gaps in coverage when reporters couldn’t be everywhere at once.

For those affected on the East Coast with smartphones and no power and those in the area lucky enough to sustain power, as well for those of us in unaffected areas that wanted to keep track of what was happening, social media was definitely the place to be for the latest developments.