In 30 years of flying, this is the first time a man has seen a natural phenomenon so close. He managed to get unique footage.
Last Sunday, a pilot from Oklahoma City - David Evans - made another flight in a glider. He flew over the cities of Tuttle and Minco and headed towards a flock of hawks - these birds always gather in the warm air currents that Evans needed to gain height. But suddenly the unexpected happened - David's aircraft was picked up by a whirlwind forming a tornado, writes the Washington Post.
The funnel was small - such are typical for water or dust tornadoes. But its power could not be ignored. Caught in warm air, the glider, circling at a speed of about 3.5 kilometers per hour, slowly rose to a spiral cloud.
The funnel of the tornado lengthened and descended closer and closer to the ground. At the same time, according to the pilot, he did not feel turbulence and calmly soared around it:
And later it turned out (and David did not know about it at the time of the flight) that a tornado also began to form on the ground with the appearance of a celestial funnel, only a weak one. The wind, blowing at a speed of about 120 kilometers per hour, swirled through the farm of a local resident named Judy Curry. Fortunately, neither her horses nor her crops were harmed.
What happened that day in the sky also impressed the US National Weather Service. According to meteorologist Ryan Bunker, the phenomenon that David Evans encountered really looks like a tornado. But how and why it appeared is impossible to explain.