NEW YORK (AP) — The storm that churned through New York City left a 14-mile path of destruction from Brooklyn to Queens, toppling trees, peeling away roofs and killing a woman in a car who had just swapped seats with her husband.

The National Weather Service sought today to determine whether the fury of wind and rain that hit the previous evening was a tornado. City officials said it hopped across New York Harbor from Staten Island and barreled uninterrupted from Park Slope in Brooklyn all the way the Bayside neighborhood in Queens.

Parks Commissioner Adrian Benepe estimated the storm destroyed more than 1,000 trees. He said forestry experts were finding damage patterns consistent with twisting winds, rather than more typical sideways winds.

"This is a very brief storm that was extremely destructive," he said.

The storm was part of a line that rippled across much of the Northeast before completing its run in New York City during the Thursday evening rush hour in a matter of minutes. It caught nearly everyone off guard, including commuters heading home and parents picking up children from after-school activities.

It snapped trees and scattered them like bowling pins, downing power lines and crushing vehicles, including a car in Queens where Iline Levakis and her husband, Billy Levakis were parked. The couple, from Pennsylvania, had just switched seats in the car, said a former business partner, Peter Markos.

She was killed; he survived.