Hurricane Sandy is swiftly making landfall on the East Coast, and with it comes rising waters and intense winds. The storm is having an effect on some popular web properties, as both Gawker and Buzzfeed are currently down due to flooding. For Gawker, this means its entire network of sites, including Gizmodo, Jalopnik, Kotaku, and others are completely inaccessible. Both sites have taken to their Twitter accounts to inform tell visitors why they are inaccessible, and to promise to have things back up and running as soon as possible. But with Sandy expected to rage on for another 12 or more hours, there's no telling when the servers will be dried out enough to get the sites back online. We'll keep you updated as to when the sites return and if there are any other websites affected by the storm.

Gawker is temporarily down because the 57th Street Crane just flooded our servers with sea foam, or something. Back with you shortly. — Gawker (@Gawker) October 29, 2012

Our site is down. Problems seem to be with NY-area servers due to Sandy. Be back ASAP. — BuzzFeed (@BuzzFeed) October 29, 2012

Update: As of Tuesday morning, Buzzfeed is back online. Gawker sites are still down, though the various properties have resumed posting using their live blog websites instead (Gawker is available here).

Update 2: Matt Buchanan at Buzzfeed has posted a lengthy description of how the site managed to get back online despite its original data center still being knocked out of commission. Thanks to some real-time backups and the tireless work of a few engineers, Buzzfeed was able to resume publication even though its main data center was still offline. The story is pretty fascinating, especially if you are interested at all about how your favorite websites handle emergencies like this.