Tornadoes in the USA, and especially in the State of Florida, cause enormous destruction and great damage to homes and infrastructure every year.
However, it is rare that the deadly force of a tornado is caught on camera when it passes through populated areas.
A Greek-American woman, the writer Daphne Nikolopoulos, had this “luck” in her misfortune.
As we can see from the video she posted on her Instagram account, Nikolopoulos is literally a few metres away from the “eye of the cyclone”.
In front of her there is real destruction, with the wind rushing at speeds of over 200 km/h dragging everything into the vortex of tornado. And when we say everything, we also mean cars.
As you can clearly see in the video, the force of the wind is such that it lifts a large car off the ground and drags it away.
This scene is shocking for those who do not experience such phenomena up close and think they are just special effects in the respective disaster movies.
But as we see it is a very dangerous reality for the people who live in these areas, who have learned to live with the fear of such incidents.
It is indicative that as reported by the local authorities, this tornado moved over a large area and destroyed everything in its path for 5 whole kilometres.
No injuries were reported to the local Fire Department, but the damage was extensive, with trees uprooted, power lines down and houses losing their roofs.
“It was all very unexpected. It happened really quickly,” tornado survivor Zachary Means told FOX Weather meteorologist Amy Freeze. “It just seemed like a normal thunderstorm. It wasn’t really too intense.”
Then, Means said, the Tornado Warning came across his phone.
“Out of nowhere, we got hit,” he said. “But it was all very unexpected, and I mean, it just happened in an instant.”
While Means was trapped inside the vehicle as the tornado approached, unbeknownst to him, his friend, Jeffrey O’Neill, was in a different car on the other side of the road.
“Just like Zack said, it all happened so fast, and the same thing,” O’Neill said. “I’d heard the (tornado) warning come on my phone. It was actually my birthday, and I was going to a birthday dinner.”
O’Neill said that after he heard the Tornado Warning, and turned around to try and seek shelter.
“I was only a half-mile from my house, and it just came so fast out of nowhere, and it was pretty scary,” he said. “I mean, a lot of flying debris, and as you can see, I’m actually the car on the left, and all these trees were on the right.”
O’Neill said he thought for sure the tornado was going to blow the trees onto his car.
“With all the flying debris, I just thought something was going to come through the window or windshield,” he said.
O’Neill said that a white truck had pulled up alongside him, and he believes that helped to block a lot of the tornado’s impacts.
“Then to see Zach get out of the car, you know, a good buddy of mine flipped three or four times across the highway,” O’Neill said. “It was just a surreal moment.”
Means said he had no idea the tornado was approaching until it was too late.
“When I was driving back towards my house after I got the warning, you know, I was just trying to get off the road,” he said.
“As I stopped my car right before I started shooting the video, I could see transformers blowing up in the distance.”
Copious amounts of debris then started filling the air.
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