[imagesource: YouTube / Live Storms Media]

We’ve seen some epic drone footage lately.

There was the drone that flew through a massive American mall, another around a castle in France, one went up the world’s tallest building in Dubai, another took a trip around the island of Madeira, and more, which you’ll find here.

But nothing beats the sheer excitement of a drone in the thick of a natural disaster.

Volcanoes? Been there, done that.

Emmy Award-winning storm chaser, Brian Emfinger, managed to capture close-up drone footage of a tornado ripping through a rural area southeast of Yazoo City, in Mississipi, on May 2.

The tornado klapped his drone so hard that it didn’t survive, but some footage was recovered, presumably from the drone app, reports DPReview.

Emfinger uploaded a portion of the video on Twitter:

Crazy close tornado video from drone. I had to make a quick getaway and drone didn’t make it as it got caught in the inflow and I lost connection as tornado was cutting me off from the drone. #mswx #tornado pic.twitter.com/5S2IkOpeHs

— Brian Emfinger (@brianemfinger) May 2, 2021

Here’s what he said about the experience:

“Everything was fine till I realized the tornado was crossing exactly where I was parked so just had to focus for about 15 seconds on not dying and in that time the drone started getting caught in the flow around the tornado. I’m not sure it ever went in it. Most likely the debris took it down into a bunch of trees. It’s a very rural area.”

Toward the end of the video, you can hear Emfinger start his car up while its navigation system directs him to the nearest road.

Close one, bud.

The full video was later uploaded to YouTube:

[source:dpreview]