Finally we get a good day of clearing. It certainly was a wild afternoon in the midlands. Whenever you have thunderstorms, theres a chance, albeii small, but theres a chance you can get tornadoes spin up. S thats exactly what happened outust sa there today. Up what started off as a quiet rain day, it ended upbringing a damage and destruction after the tornado touched down in West Columbia. Thh take you out live to jennifer ray, and shes been out on the Farmers Market. We are about a half mile away where you just mentioned that tornado touched down earlier today, and if you look behind me, evidence of that massive tree is one of many, and now crews were out here earlier removing this tree from the up about a half hour ago for safety reasons and tried to clear that as quickly as possible. Also across the street, 321, they were not able to go through the gate but they also did experience damage, and several cars did have window damage, and also crucifixing cars that seem to have appeared
Farley in john farley. You were tracking this thing before it even touched the ground. Yeah. As we went to the afternoon, jonathan and i were looking at this. The way the radar works, it shoots up in the clouds. It sees the rotation. We could see this thing developing and yes, it did touch down. Behind me is the map that the Weather Service put out. Lets go to that. I will show you where it touched down and what the story was on this tornado. It was an ef0, it had winds of 85 miles an hour and it touched down right near charleston and dixiana road, just north of the farmers market. It was on the ground for about half a mile. They say. 6 miles. The width between 50, 75 yard and then grace will be talking about some of the damage that came through and it touched down at 2 28. 2 28 this afternoon. Lets talk about whats happening with the radar. As you can see, there is a lot of green. But this is light to moderate no more Severe Threat going out there. That said, what we do have is all of
Extended forecast. We will talk about that coming up. Thank you so much. We understand there is still Power Outages in the Coverage Area tonight. Specifically batesburg, leesville. That area of lexington county. News 19s joyce koh is live from the community with more. Joyce . Reporter that area that we are standing on was hit very hard. On the property of tracy lodging company. I am joined by the owner. Tracy. You have never seen anything like this . Never before. There was i have heard of some coming through had area before my time but never in my life time. Reporter i know it destroyed a lot of your property back there nat we showed but that we showed but it made its way down here. Exactly. We have two Office Buildings and a shop building. And it came right by and no reporter and all of your employees were okay . They are in the building . All employees were fine. And actually [ talking at the same time ] the buildings that were not hit were the ones the employees were in. That is a
Farmers market. There may have been a second tornado. This time in the steadman community. Residents told us he did see the twister on the ground at about 3 pm. The high winds uprooted trees and downed power lines. It was a disaster. It was the shed that went down. We traveled to let 16 lexington county. Reporter i am standing beside a tractortrailer that turned over. Used to be a shed. You can see there are no walls at this point there used to be for big poles holding up the structure and only one of the poles remains. The other part of this wall is completely crushing this car under here. This truck over here at the roof is on the ground. Theres a lot of destruction out here on this one property but luckily everyone made it out okay. It didnt touch the buildings where the employees were. The National Weather service will send a crew to that area tomorrow to determine if the damage was caused by tornado. We are still seeing some rain moving through the thunder storms are along the coa
National Weather Service says a tornado touched down in the midlands. Weather Officials Say it was an ef zero tornado that came through the midlands today that is the lowest tier tornado on the scope. This is the area that the national Weather Service says was touched by the tornado touchdown. It was quick. The system still left behind some significant damage. That is where tara pettit is tonight. What is the damage left behind this evening . Reporter janet, brian, there is still a handful of Power Outages and several people cleaning up tonight. Were in West Columbia just out of charleston where this road was partially blocked off today due to the tree behind me that was completely uprooted and collapsed on this street. It was likely due to the tornado that swept through this area earlier today. It was been seen it has been seen by more than 1000 1060 times. We caught up with great and he says he was watching a radar on the app on his phone. When he saw that a tornado could be overhead