Video: Car flipped by weak tornado in South Carolina, police say

GOOSE CREEK, S.C. (WCBD) – Two people suffered minor injuries Wednesday after a car flipped in Goose Creek, South Carolina during what the National Weather Service determined was a weak tornado.

Officials with the Goose Creek Police Department said the vehicle was traveling on US 52 just before 2:30 p.m. when a gust of wind lifted the car and flipped it into the air.

In a video shared with Nexstar’s WCBD, seen in the player below, the swirling wind upends a black vehicle, leaving it standing upright on the front bumper momentarily before it crashes down, slamming into the driver’s side of a light-colored sedan.

Photos from the scene, below, show the car came to rest on its side with extensive damage.

Police say there were two people inside the car who suffered minor injuries. They were taken to a local hospital for treatment.

Berkeley County’s Emergency Manager and the National Weather Service said the car was hit by a brief, weak tornado. No other damage was reported.

John Schinkle, who works at nearby Stokes Kia, described what it was like as the storm moved through the area.

“Jason and I were sitting right here – we were looking out the window. It was raining pretty hard, the top of the tree line out there you could actually see the movement of the trees bending and spiraling … went around the building and went across 52 and picked up a car over there and spun it around and dropped it almost on another car,” he recalled.

“All these windows, all these doors opened. The pressure inside the building actually came out. We tried to keep the door shut; Jason was trying to pull the door shut, and he couldn’t do it. And he’s a big guy,” he added.

The incident happened as rain bands from Hurricane Idalia moved across the Lowcountry on Wednesday. The storm is expected to continue lashing the area through early Thursday morning.