When I checked my email this morning, my mother, who lives in France, had sent me links to two Instagram photos of the blackout and flooding in lower Manhattan. Some of the most visually stunning impressions of Sandy’s impact have been shared via Instagram. According to Forbes.com’s Steve Bertoni, even before the storm made landfall, there were 300,026 photos shared on the mobile site under #sandy; 183,003 tagged #hurricanesandy, and 27,564 under #frankenstorm (along with 1,467 photos tagged #huricanesandy, for those whose spelling gets shaky when the wind blows). As power remains out and cell networks stay up, Bertoni predicts Instagram, along with Twitter and Facebook, may prove “one of the key links to the outside world to millions of stranded people.”