New Yorkers don’t expect to have a day at the shore capped by a tornado, but that’s exactly what happened when a funnel cloud scraped two Long Island beach clubs early Thursday evening, its terrifying approach and aftermath caught on numerous viral videos.
The funnel cloud started as a waterspout off East Atlantic Beach in Nassau County, then transformed into a tornado and impacted the Silver Point Beach Club, damaging cabanas and scattering debris across the sand.
Those taking the videos at the club and elsewhere narrate its approach in shock as other bystanders react with panic in their voices.
The twister dissolved into a storm cloud shortly after landfall around 6:45 p.m., according to the New York Post.
“A tornado touched down in Nassau County minutes ago in Atlantic Beach,” Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman said in a statement, also reporting there were no serious injuries.
“There is property damage at Silver Point Beach Club and Sun and Surf that is being assessed right now, and a search team has been mobilized to make sure no one is trapped within the cabanas,” Blakeman also said.
The Post talked to Long Beach local Matthew Stark, 28, who was at the Sun and Surf Beach Club with nine family members when the storm struck. He said they huddled into their wooden cabana to escape the rain when the twister lifted off its roof.
“As I was closing the door to the cabana, you heard and felt the whoosh of the gusts of wind, and it ripped the roof right off, blew all the debris, and stuff just started falling on us — the roof and the beams,” Stark told the tabloid.
Tornadoes are hatched in the rush of warm air meeting cold fronts in the spring and summer in the central parts of the United States but the weather phenomena is not typically expected along the East Coast.
The twister was the first to touchdown in Nassau County in nearly five years, News 12 reported.
“I’ve never felt or experienced anything like that, kind of surreal. One second, it’s like no big deal. The next second, everything was turned upside down, quite literally.”
Neither Stark nor his relatives were injured seriously.
“Someone was watching out for us for sure,” Stark said. “After all that, being able to walk away injury-free with nine people…I got a scratch on my finger, a little bump on my head, but yeah, that’s it.”
The National Weather Service told the Post the waterspout “may have come on land,” making it a traditional tornado, but the service was still making the official determination.
Another possible waterspout-turned-tornado touched down in the Rockaways in Queens around the same time, according to the service.
Breitbart contributor Lowell Cauffiel is the best-selling author of the Los Angeles crime novel Below the Line and nine other crime novels and nonfiction titles. See lowellcauffiel.com for more.
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