It was a very long night in the field for BNVN Weather Paparazzi Brandon Sullivan and his friends that were out chasing the line of severe storms that hit central and southeastern Oklahoma. Here is the full video of the Atoka and Tushka, Oklahoma tornado event that includes the dash camera footage.
A very large and destructive tornado caused extensive damage, multiple injuries and at least one fatality in Atoka county on Thursday.
The video starts out with the point of view dash camera footage as the drive up towards the town of Tushka, OK from the south side of the storm. At twenty two seconds into the video, lightning or a power flash lights up the storm and you can see a funnel cloud right in front of them.
They continue to keep driving towards the storm to follow the tornado when they see how close they were to the storm and at Fifty five seconds into the video, the stop rapidly to avoid driving into high tension power lines. The power lines were knocked down by the tornado and blocked the roadway. Just about at the one minute mark of the video, a Pickup Truck ends up driving through the power lines and a white SUV also drives into the power lines but stops almost in time to avoid hitting them. At the same time, a massive wall cloud and lowering is almost touching the ground only a few hundred yards in front of them on the road.
The dash camera footage continues for a while longer showing the vivid storm motion of the lowering of the mesocyclone. The POV footage when the chase team stops to check out a home that was destroyed by the tornado to see if anyone was trapped inside of the debris.
The rest of the footage is shot with the news cameras out the side of the truck as the mesocyclone was passing them. Same part as the POV shot but looking to the side of the storm as it passes them. Amazing footage of the storm motions as a extremely large tornado was on the other side of the tree line an heading for the town of Tushka and Atonka, Oklahoma.
After the tornado passes in second part of the video, extensive damage was found as debris littered the roadway and fields. The remaining part of the video shows some of the damage to Tushka, OK before the sun set and the chase team stopped documenting the storm damage to help out with the rescue efforts at the shelter.
To license this footage, contact http://www.stormchasingvideo.com