Social picture-sharing site Instagram has become a valuable tool in letting the world know the effects Hurricane Sandy is having on the east coast of America. Hundreds of thousands of users have taken to the service to post pictures of the devastation and effects the severe weather has wrought on their neighbourhoods.

Plenty of them have also been showing they haven't lost their sense of humour either, by posting gags about the hurricane, but there are some astonishing pictures of flooding and deserted streets, especially in New York City.

Instagram boss Kevin Systrom told website Poynter yesterday evening that 10 pictures per second relating to Hurricane Sandy were being posted on the service. "There are now 10 pictures per second being posted with the hashtag #sandy - most are images of people prepping for the storm and images of scenes outdoors," he said.

Pocket-lint has figured out that since that statement the rate has risen to 12.5 photos per second. At last count 453,460 pictures had been posted with the hashtag #sandy. There have also been 288,611 posted with the hashtag #hurricanesandy.

The Google Nexus event planned for yesterday evening in New York was postponed because of the severe storms, but the company still released its new range of devices, including the Nexus 4, 32GB Nexus 7 (with 3G too) and the Nexus 10 tablet.