Multiple tornadoes cause damage across the Midlands

COLUMBIA, S.C. (WOLO)– The National Weather Service has confirmed three tornado touchdowns here in the Midlands area spreading from Elgin all the way up in Lexington County.

The National Weather Service had three surveying crews out assessing the damage. The National weather service said March is just the start of tornado season, and being in the middle of an El Nino in the spring won’t help.

“You can see here, here, here, here, all of them have the potential to produce tornadoes,” Frank Alsheimer said, a science and Operations Officer with NOAA/National Weather Service. 

The National Weather Service said the tornadoes here in Columbia had wind speeds up to 135 miles per hour. They said it is unusual to have so many tornadoes touch down in a single day.

“It was pretty much all hands on deck,” Alsheimer said. 

Damage was seen all over the state, requiring some massive clean up.

“This is right where the center of the tornado was… and we’ve got damage reports all along this path,” Alsheimer said. 

That path that went right over to Heisy Ramirez’s neighborhood in the Red Bank area.

” looks terrible from here look at that,” Ramirez said while assessing the damage.

Ramirez said she was napping when all of sudden she woke up to things hitting her house. She quickly gathered her 5 children and husband to take cover.

“All of a sudden I hear another boom and I start screaming get in the closet, get in the closet,” Ramirez said. 

Her neighborhood has damage all around; large trees were taken down by the strong winds and Ramirez’s roof suffered a big hit. Overall, she said they are lucky.

“Blessed year, we’re good we’re good. These are just material things,” Ramirez said. 

The busy kick off to tornado season has both neighbors and the National Weather Service reiterate just how serious tornado warnings are.

“Tornadoes are simply something you don’t mess around with,” Alsheimer said.

“Take it serious. Basically, that’s what we learned this time,” Ramirez said.

The national weather service says they rely on people to call, facebook, email, or even tweet about their storm damage so they can go check it out. If you have storm damage you’d like to report to click here.