Wild Videos Of Tornados Crashing Through South Carolina High Schools

Serious damage at a South Carolina high school after a tornado
struck it this month. Nobody was inside when this twister
hit on a Saturday night. 

Two South Carolina high schools were hit by tornadoes this month, but luckily in one case, nobody was in the school. In the second case, the twister hit the parking lot, but missed the actual high school building.

Dramatic vidoes of both tornadoes are at the bottom of this post.

Let's start with the high school parking lot tornado.  

It was an unexpected one, but it did yield some dramatic video, and a case lesson on how small, relatively weak tornadoes can be potentially deadly.

In this case, nobody was hurt when the tornado went through a high school parking lot, damaging dozens of cars. The twister tossed a few on top of each other.

You might have to watch the video at the bottom of this post  a couple times to catch the narrow funnel cloud going across the parking lot and tossing the vehicles. But it is something to behold.

As is often the case with tornadoes, this one is pretty narrow, so many of the vehicles in the parking lot do just fine.

The tornado goes to prove that it doesn't take a particularly large or strong tornado to put people in danger.

The tornado was an EF-1, with winds of 90 mph.  It hit the campus of Loris High School in Horry County South Carolina on Monday, according to numerous news reports, including television station WPDE  in Florence, South Carolina.

About 75 cars were damaged, and some of them were damaged, WPDE reported. 

Still, since classes were in session, we're glad the tornado didn't go through the high school instead. It would have only damaged part of the high school, but the part were students would have been in could have been really in trouble.

There was no tornado warning in effect at the time.  Meteorologists at the nearest National Weather Service office were tracking the parent thunderstorm and detected some weak rotation within it. But that rotation didn't seem strong enough to set off a tornado.

But it did. The rotation was just enough to set off a relatively weak tornado in a place where it could have hurt people.

This is another reason why you should take severe thunderstorms seriously.  You'll often hear a mention of weak rotation within the oncoming storm. Much more often than not, when the rotation is weak, you won't get a tornado. But in the case of Loris County, South Carolina, and I am sure many other instance it did. And it could happen any time.

This was the second time within a week that a tornado struck a South Carolina high school. On January 11, a  EF-2 tornado with winds up to 130 mph hit North Central High School in Kershaw County, South Carolina. Security cameras there yielded even more dramatic videos than the parking lot tornado.

Because it was a weekend, nobody was in the school, so nobody was hurt.

Which is a good thing Since so many people are in schools, they can be dangerous places to be in tornadoes.

Back on March 1, 20017 an EF-4 tornado with top winds of 170 mph hit Enterprise High School in Alabama, killing eight students and injuring 50.

Here's the video:



Here's surveillance video of another high school hit at night a few days before the video of the one above in South Carolina. Glad nobody was in there. Hallways turned into dangerous wind tunnels:

Video Shows Tornado Blasting Store, Then Stunned Survivors

A surveillance video surfaced last month taken inside a store in that town in Nebraska that was hit by double tornadoes in June.

The video shows the store blasting apart, then people slowly emerging closets and such where they took shelter  to see what happened.

They look stunned, as anybody would be.  Amazingly, nobody was hurt in this store.

Here's the video:

Colfax, Wisconsin Surveillance Camera Shows Even Weak Tornadoes Are Scary

A neighborhood in Colfax, Wisonsin, not far from
the gas station in the video, below.  

An EF1 tornado, with winds estimated at between 85 to 90 mph, hit the town of Colfax, Wisconsin a few days ago.

A surveillance camera at a gas station captured it as it tore through the parking lot.

I have no idea why the owner of the car in the foreground left his window open, but that was probably the least of his worries when the tornado came along.

And the driver of the pickup truck looked like he saw the tornado coming, said "Oh, shit," and turned around.

Good thing. He still probably got caught in the twister, but at least he minimized the chances a two by four would go through his windshield and embed itself in his forehead.

Luckily, no injuries were reported in this tornado.

The surveillance camera video makes you understand why it was indeed a lucky break nobody was hurt:

Saratoga, New York Lightning Strike Shows Why Standing Under Trees in Storms Is Bad Idea

Lightning striking a tree in Saratoga, N.Y., as captured by
a surveillance camera.  

A surveillance camera at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center in Saratoga Springs, New York captured lightning hitting a tree at the edge of one of their parking lots.

The video goes to show why you don't stand under trees in storms.

If you watch carefully, you'll note, too, how far and wide pieces of the tree rocket into the parking lot, especially early on in the strike.

You don't have to be that close to a lightning strike to really get hurt.

The clip is going viral, much like that one of the truck getting struck by lightning as it sped down an Alberta highway recently.

Here's the Saratoga surveillance camera drama: