Horrific video of a tornado up close in Australia yesterday (video)

3/22/2013 10:30pm by 15

There’s a horrific video of a tornado that happened in Perth, Australia yesterday (Thursday).  I’ve posted it below.

I love tornadoes. I grew up with them in Illinois, and they’ve always fascinated me. I get it, they’re destructive – I don’t love them hurting people, but I find them absolutely fascinating. So I’ve watched a lot of tornado videos in my life, and lived through a lot of tornado warnings as a kid. This is definitely one of the better videos I’ve seen.

The tornado happened in Perth, Australia, yesterday.

RESIDENTS have told of their terror after tornadoes with wind speeds of up to 254km/h smashed Victoria’s northeast, leaving 20 people injured including two critically….

One man was filling his car with petrol in Euroa when a tornado caused the Shell service station to collapse.

“The tornado came to my car – I actually thought it was going to pick my car up,” the man, Daniel, told 3AW.

“I was stuck inside the car outside the actual service station, and everything around me just collapsed on top of my car”.

He’s lucky.  The tornado that hit us in the Chicago area in 1967 threw 25-40 cards that were sitting at a stop light, killing 16 people.  We lived 9 blocks away, but fortunately the tornado was heading east, and we lived south.

It’s amazing to watch the tornado grow in just a few seconds.

I’d be curious what these guys were doing watching this thing – whether they pulled over for safety, or to watch the tornado. If they were just watching, well that clearly wasn’t the smartest move. (H/t David Mixner)

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@aravosis | Facebook | Google+. Editor of AMERICAblog, joint JD/MSFS from Georgetown, worked in the US Senate, World Bank, Children's Defense Fund, and as a stringer for the Economist. A frequent TV pundit, he has been on The O'Reilly Factor, Hardball, World News Tonight, Nightline & Reliable Sources. Full bio and .

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  • MoonDragon

    Reinforcing the words of Johnny Fever “God hates trailer parks.”

  • Drew2u

    Does Australia NOT get tornadoes?
    Also: Is this station affiliated with National Geographic? That opening news theme seems a little infringing.

    • Cletus

      Actually, that’s the opening for NBC Nightly News.

      • http://AMERICAblog.com/ John Aravosis

        Isn’t that funny. I noticed that too. Must be part of the same mega conglomerate.

        • Cletus

          Maybe they figured, being on the other side of the world and all, NBC wouldn’t notice.

  • http://www.rebeccamorn.com/mind BeccaM

    Western Penn gal here. I’ve seen a few on the ground, none huge. Watched one across a small valley from me ripping trees out of the ground once.

    They’re definitely scary and dangerous — and yes, the sound is unlike anything else in the world.

  • grover

    You call that a tornado? [pause] Now THATS a Tornado! and the news station is from Perth (Western Australia), the tornado was in New South Wales/Victoria (South Eastern Australia)

    • http://AMERICAblog.com/ John Aravosis

      Ah ok, sorry about that. My geography down there is wanting ;)

  • Lenore Frost

    Just for the record, this tornado was along border towns of southern New South Wales and northern Victoria – Perth is on the other side of the continent, you’ve just picked up a video from the Perth news.

    • Anthony

      Reading the headline made me go “How on earth did we get hit with something like that yesterday, and I not hear about it…”, and then I read the quoted text and realised that they just used our localised news and assumed it was a local story.

      It goes without saying that this is sort of the equivalent of using a new feed from say Austin TX about something that happened in Plattsburg NY (upstate), and saying that it happened in Austin. Just to use somewhat random examples sort of on the other side of the continental US from each other.

  • Phil Bellerive

    I remember that tornado in 1967 – Oak Lawn. My uncle took us through there on 95th Street several weeks later. It looked like something out of Berlin in 1945.

    Several years later, I was sitting on the balcony of my apartment mesmerized by a peculiar cloud formation as a storm passed nearby. I didn’t sense any danger until the siren went off. It didn’t look like a funnel cloud because it was basically square.

    • http://AMERICAblog.com/ John Aravosis

      Yeah, I was only 4. But I remember going by the high school and seeing that massive chunk missing from the gym.

  • http://www.facebook.com/tony.tyner1 Tony Tyner

    It seemed like in the Chicagoland area – after the 1967 tornado – that tornado warnings were on the TV all the time!! We did have some pretty iconic weathermen too. Harry Volkman and John Coleman.

    • http://AMERICAblog.com/ John Aravosis

      Harry Volkman came to my grade school :)

      • http://www.facebook.com/tony.tyner1 Tony Tyner

        Hope your school gave him a big boutineer!

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