The crazy video below was caught on Monday, May 26, as a big tornado struck a North Dakota oil worker's camp. Nine people were injured and 13 trailers were destroyed.
The twister touched down at around 7:50 p.m. CDT at a camp about 5 miles south of Watford City, according to the Associated Press. It descended on the camp so quickly that people didn't have time to take cover.
The whole thing seems to have been caught on on video and uploaded to YouTube by Dan Yorgason, who ran outside when he first caught sight of the tornado, still in the first stages of formation, as you can see:
As the tornado builds, the oil workers get scared and head for their truck. You can see the rain start and the storm grow as they freak out and decide to start driving away from the growing twister. At its peak the winds hit 120 miles per hour:
When they get a bit further away from it, you can see it has grown huge. The bottom half of the storm has taken up a ton of dirt. You can even see flashes of light happening within the funnel as debris collides and explodes.
The tornado was an EF2, according to The Weather Channel. That's not too strong - the EF scale goes up to 5 - but the video these oil workers took is incredible, they are so close to it:
