MEMPHIS, Tenn.– An Arkansas farmer’s video of a damaging storm rolling into the area Saturday night has gone viral, not just because of the images, but his reaction.
The 14 seconds of heart-pounding video captured the moments and urgency of Casey Skarda, briefly trapped in his truck, spotting a possible tornado.
“Oh my God, I’m in a tornado,” he said. “I’m in a tornado. I’m in a tornado! Oh my gosh, tornado! Oh my, God.” (video below)
Skarda captured the chilling cell phone video in Des Arc, Arkansas.
“No bodily injuries or anything, kind of little of a scare and a little property damage,” Skarda said.
Tornado warnings were issued for Des Arc, which is northwest of Brinkley and about 95 miles west of Memphis. Skarda and his employees were in the field planting soybeans when the storm rolled through.
“The whole storm was whirling. You could see the clouds whirling and lightning was popping everywhere. Man, it was like this is for real. I hadn’t seen anything like this before,” Skarda said.
In the viral video, you can see the storm rotating and barreling toward him.
“I really didn’t have a lot of time to think. It was just, please God, let me be okay, and when the roof came off and flew over the top, I knew this was for real,” he said.
Even as he took cover, he was determined to get out his cell phone to take a video of the storm.
“That’s what people do in this day in age. They try to get everything on video, and I did that and me squealing and yelling like a little girl in the video caused all the hype,” Skarda said.
Many won’t forget the images and the sound of Casey Skarda’s voice. It’s an experience he said he would do again, but with one exception.
“I think I’ll try to pull out the camera unless it’s (the storm) much bigger, then I may be running in that Ram truck,” Skarda said.
Skarda told WREG that when his wife saw the video she laughed and said he was crazy and blessed to have not been hurt.
The National Weather Service has not confirmed whether the whirling cloud Skarda saw was actually a tornado.
