Glider Pilot Takes A Wild Ride Around A Landspout Tornado

A glider pilot in Oklahoma got an amazingly close view of a landspout tornado.

Video going viral shows David Evans circling the funnel cloud that emerged southwest of Oklahoma City on Sunday.

Watch the video here:

“It was really pretty,” Evans told The Washington Post on Monday.

Landspout tornadoes “tend to be much weaker and shorter-lived than their supercell counterparts, with wind speeds rarely exceeding 100 mph,” according to the National Weather Service.

Sunday’s landspout was “not that threatening,” said Evans, who was hitching a ride on a thermal updraft in his motorized glider when the funnel appeared.

The weather events also have “a narrow, rope-like condensation funnel that forms while the thunderstorm cloud is still growing and there is no rotating updraft ― the spinning motion originates near the ground,” the National Severe Storms Laboratory says.