Screencap: Facebook

On the East Coast in particular, news of Hurricane Sandy has largely dominated social media channels, including Twitter, Reddit and--of course--Facebook. In fact, a rep for Facebook has sent Betabeat some statistics that show just how intense the chatter on the platform has been over the last few days.

According to Facebook, mentions of the term "hurricane sandy" and "frankenstorm" have spiked one million percent. Literally! Likewise, "hurricane" has seen a 21,962 percent increase, while "sandy" is up 6578 percent and "storm" is up 2999 percent.

Facebook also uses a metric called the Talk Meter that works on a scale of 1-10 to measure how popular a certain topic is across the platform. Hurricane Sandy is up to 7.12--compare that to Obama, which is at 3.86, and Romney, which is at 3.5.

No word on where cat pics rate on the meter.