A U.S. Airways plane leaving New York City crashed in the Hudson River a few hours ago, possibly due to a bird striking the engine. Rescue operations are under way. Apparently all passengers are safely off the plane now. But I’ll tell you one thing: it’s freezing in New York City today. I can only imagine what it must have been like on the water.

Pictures of the plane floating in the river are already on Flickr, Tumblr, and TwitPic (which seems to be overloaded right now). In fact, the picture above was taken by Janis Krums who Twittered it from his iPhone, and posted via TwitPic.

Here’s more Twitter conversation about the crash, a crowd-sourced story on NowPublic, as well as a general resource page for finding more details. The picture below is by grego!