Tornado flips cars, mows down trees in United States

Security camera at Hopper's Tap House captures a car cartwheeling from the parking lot into a roadway, carried by the storm's violent winds. Photo / AP

By Jason Samenow

Dramatic video has emerged of the tornado that blew through Salisbury, Maryland, on Monday (local time). The tornado overturned three cars, downed trees and damaged buildings. No serious injuries were reported.

In the video above, a security camera at Hopper's Tap House captures a car cartwheeling from the parking lot into a roadway, carried by the storm's violent winds.

Hopper's Tap House is on South Salisbury Boulevard (also known as Route 13), just south of Salisbury proper. The cars were flipped in the parking lot of the Pavilion at 1400 South, according to WBOC, the CBS television affiliate in Salisbury. One of the cars that flipped landed on top of two others.

Witness Edward Scheitlin jnr was driving along South Salisbury Boulevard during the story and started recording. At the beginning of his video (below), Scheitlin captured the storm's funnel and also a transformer exploding as it passed.

He drove into the area that the storm had ripped across just moments earlier and had to weave around toppled trees and other debris. "I just stayed focused on surroundings and tried to avoid all the debris I could," he said.

In addition to the downed trees and overturned cars, the storm took down utility poles and damaged several properties.

The National Weather Service confirmed the resulting damage was, in fact, caused by a tornado. It rated the tornado at the EF1 intensity on the 0-5 EF scale and determined its peak winds were around 168km/h.