A Tornado Took On New York. The Tornado Didn’t Last Long.

NEW YORK — New Yorkers have become somewhat inured to the various reasons that their smartphones vibrate with alerts. And then there was Thursday night, when a tornado warning sent phones and their owners buzzing.

A swath of the lower Bronx and upper Queens spent 14 minutes under a tornado warning Thursday night, with smartphone alerts urging residents to seek shelter.

Smirks and eyerolls greeted the warning — even as an actual tornado touched down in College Point, Queens, knocking down at least 50 trees, tearing down power lines and peeling siding off some houses.

The National Weather Service confirmed Friday that a tornado with a maximum speed of 85 mph struck New York. There were no reported injuries.

The warning was issued by the Weather Service at 10:18 p.m. for the southern Bronx and northern Queens, and it expired at 10:32 p.m. as the storm traveled east. A warning in northern Nassau County expired at 10:45 p.m.

Unfortunately, the alert did not exactly have its desired effect: It instead inspired jokes about ruby slippers and related displays of ambivalence on Twitter.

“I just got a tornado warning. I live on the third story of a pre-war building in a Astoria, NYC. I honestly don’t even know what I’d do except wind up in OZ,” one person wrote.

The New York Times’ own Rick Rojas witnessed the effects of the storm firsthand, attending a Beyoncé and Jay-Z concert at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey on Thursday night. The concert was delayed as the weather passed through.

Tornado sightings in New York are rare. From 1950, when the Weather Service began tracking tornadoes in the territory from Long Island to Orange and Putnam counties, until 1974, not a single confirmed tornado hit the city. Since then, a few have come into the city, including one that hit Brooklyn with winds of up to 135 mph in 2007.

The last tornado to hit New York City was in 2012, said Jay Engle, a meteorologist with the Weather Service. On Sept. 8, 2012, tornadoes touched down in Breezy Point, Queens, and Canarsie, Brooklyn, knocking down power lines and sending beachside barbecues and chairs flying.