Footage obtained by the ABC shows a rare glimpse inside a tornado that struck a rural property near Mansfield in Victoria's northeast last month. The Weather Bureau reports this unusual tornado left a trail of destruction measuring 25 kilometers long and 400 meters wide, impacting areas from Howes Creek to Boorolite. Jonathan How from the bureau explains the significance of this event.
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00:00You can see, just in the background, a little bit of cloud structure falling down.
00:07Then you see the first signs of the tree falling down, obviously the kangaroos know something's
00:11going.
00:12And then the branches get swept up into the rotation, a lot of dirt, there's a lot of
00:17water vapour.
00:18So you can very clearly see that rotation coming through.
00:22And then yes, looking at it from different angles, you can see that sort of coming down
00:26And then just that blast of wind coming through and very clearly see that rotation, which
00:31is very typical of a tornado and there's really strong winds pushing that garage door over.
00:37And yeah, you can kind of see everything sort of takes place in less than 20, 30 seconds.
00:43So certainly, you know, very devastating, devastating for the property owner.
00:47So certainly in Australia, we do see tornadoes every year, generally between 30 to 80 tornadoes
00:52are reported.
00:53The most common hotspots around southeast Queensland, eastern and central New South
00:57Wales and then northeast Victoria, where this footage is actually captured.
01:00It is difficult to say whether or not tornadoes are becoming more frequent.
01:04What is likely happening is that with the advance of technology, cameras and better
01:08reporting, it might be that we're actually being able to record and observe these tornadoes
01:13a little bit better.
01:14Yeah.
01:15And certainly, you know, that tornado probably would have kept going, you know, that 25 kilometre
01:19sort of destruction that I think the thunderstorm team managed to see on satellite.
01:23So from our point of view, it's very, very impressive footage that they managed to capture
01:28this, but also just shows sort of the destruction associated with tornadoes.