A waterspout formed off the Long Island coast and moved ashore as a small tornado that wreaked havoc on a beach club Thursday evening \u2014 damaging cabanas and scattering debris across the sand, insane footage shows. <\/p>\n
Harrowing video from East Atlantic Beach, Nassau County, shows the massive spout forming near the shoreline and gradually moving inland, tearing through boardwalk businesses before dissolving shortly after landfall around 6:45 p.m.<\/p>\n
The scene over Atlantic Beach Club in Nassau County on August 20, 2026, after a tornado warning had been issued for parts of the county. Instagram\/@docdondon<\/p>\n
The tornado tore through boardwalk businesses before dissolving shortly after landfall around 6:45 p.m. Obtained by the NY Post<\/p>\n
The county declared a state of emergency amid the extremely rare weather event. <\/p>\n
\u201cA tornado touched down in Nassau County minutes ago in Atlantic Beach,\u201d Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman said in a statement, adding that \u201cso far there are no reports of casualties or serious injuries.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
The twister tore through shorefront structures and lifted roofs from beachside cabanas, leaving wood and patio furniture strewn throughout the area.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is property damage at Silver Point Beach Club and Sun and Surf that is being assessed right now, and a search team has been mobilized to make sure no one is trapped within the cabanas,\u201d Blakeman said.<\/p>\n
Long Beach local Matthew Stark, 28, was at the Sun and Surf Beach Club with a group of nine family members when the storm struck. <\/p>\n
The tugboat mate and lifelong member of the beach club said they all had huddled into their wooden cabana to escape the torrential rain when the tornado tore off its roof. <\/p>\n
\u201cAs I was closing the door to the cabana, you heard and felt the whoosh of the gusts of wind, and it ripped the roof right off, blew all the debris, and stuff just started falling on us \u2014 the roof and the beams,\u201d Stark told The Post. <\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve never felt or experienced anything like that, kind of surreal. One second, it\u2019s like no big deal. The next second, everything was turned upside down, quite literally.\u201d <\/p>\n
He said the destruction left by the twister was like nothing he\u2019d ever seen.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve never seen carnage like that. It looked like the videos you see in the Midwest of like a tornado ripping through a town,\u201d Stark said. \u201cIt was crazy.\u201d<\/p>\n
Luckily, he and his relatives walked away largely unscathed. <\/p>\n
\u201cSomeone was watching out for us for sure,\u201d he said. \u201cAfter all that, being able to walk away injury-free with nine people\u2026I got a scratch on my finger, a little bump on my head, but yeah, that\u2019s it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Debris is seen scattered around after the tornado ripped through the beach club on Long Island. Obtained by the NY Post<\/p>\n
AccuWeather confirmed that the footage captured in East Atlantic Beach was consistent with a waterspout, which is essentially a tornado that forms over a body of water rather than land. <\/p>\n
The National Weather Service told The Post the waterspout \u201cmay have come on land\u201d \u2014 making it a traditional tornado, but added that an assessment of damage is needed before making an official determination. <\/p>\n
Another possible waterspout-turned-tornado touched down in the Rockaways in Queens around the same time, according to NWS.<\/p>\n
Long Island local Matthew Stark, 28, \u2018never felt or experienced anything like that, kind of surreal\u2019 during the tornado. Obtained by the NY Post<\/p>\n
A tornado warning had been issued for southwestern Nassau County and parts of Queens \u2014 specifically Oceanside and Baldwin Harbor \u2014 from roughly 6:50 to 7:05 p.m.<\/p>\n
Heavy rainfall also created a headache for Long Islanders, including significant travel issues, with reports of a woman trapped in a flooded vehicle on Cherry Valley Avenue and the West Hempstead Turnpike, according to sources.<\/p>\n
Additionally, two to three vehicles were stranded on North Central Avenue in Valley Stream beneath the Southern State Parkway, with further reports of motorists trapped on the highway itself.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A waterspout formed off the Long Island coast and moved ashore as a small tornado that wreaked havoc…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1014471,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5122],"tags":[5229,14079,8072,6084,5248,7834,405,403,5226,5225,5228,5227,4413,3883,3878,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":["post-1014470","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-america","tag-beaches","tag-floods","tag-long-island","tag-metro","tag-nassau-county","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-newyork","tag-newyorkcity","tag-ny","tag-nyc","tag-queens","tag-storms","tag-tornadoes","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/117132267740272788","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1014470","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1014470"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1014470\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1014471"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1014470"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1014470"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1014470"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}