Two visually stunning tornadoes struck China this past week, part of a series of natural disasters in the sprawling country of more than 1.4 billion people.
A dramatic video filmed in the Chinese megacity of Guangzhou, located in the southeastern province of Guangdong, shows a terrifyingly large twister tearing through buildings in the dark on June 16. As the tornado strikes a downtown train station, several small explosions are seen, with sparks being lifted into the sky by the rapidly rotating storm.
The tornado, illuminated by city lights and the explosions of transformers, is clearly visible from several perspectives in the darkness as it tears through the dense urban center. According to witnesses, the twister was on the ground for about three minutes.
As the tornado rampaged through the city, one man filming a video added his own colorful commentary.
"It has a power cut. The huge tornado is moving along the track of Line 14. Wow, the sparks fly here and there! The Line 14 metro station is struck!" he said, according to a translation by Newsflare.
In the storm's aftermath, Guangzhou residents took to the streets to survey the damage and begin cleaning up. Trees and scaffolding had collapsed into the street, and the tornado and strong winds associated with the storm knocked out power in the area. Amazingly, no storm-related casualties were reported.
Earlier in the week on June 13, a large tornado tore through Changzhai Village in the eastern Henan Province. The stunning close-up footage captured the twister tearing apart farmland and tossing several pieces of large debris up into the air.
As the dirt brown twister moved across the field, it brushed up against a large structure with a white tarp on its roof. The tornado left the tarp tattered and damaged, with the fabric joining the collection of debris that was orbiting the storm.
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When the twister moved into the village, several houses were damaged by the storm, with parts of their roofs tossed into the street. Trees were ripped out of the ground and left on their side, with the area looking more like a war zone than a quaint village. No injuries were reported from the storm.
The two twisters are the latest outbursts in a recent series of severe weather events in China, according to Reuters. Torrential rainfall has been impacting parts of southern China, and temperatures in northern China are set to eclipse 104 degrees Fahrenheit.
"Weather conditions in China will tend to be unfavorable this summer," an official at the country's aviation regulator said at a news briefing on Friday.
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