Tornado Spotted in Victoria

Here is a rarity, a tornado was spotted just to the west of Melbourne today:

A mini tornado has been caught on camera twisting through farmland near the You Yangs Regional Park outside of Geelong this afternoon.

Jeb Byrne, 61 of Mount Mercer, was driving along the Little River Ripley Road, between the townships of Little River and Anakie, when he saw what he thought was a plane crashing to earth.

"When I initially saw it, I was so startled it literally looked like it was an aircraft that had plummeted out of the cloud with a trail of black smoke behind it," Mr Byrne, a former commercial pilot said.

"It extended right up into the cloud and the cloud was probably about 3000 or 4000 feet (high) and I’m a pilot so I can judge these things.

"So it was quite fantastic, I was very close to it, it was literally only a couple of fields away and it was very peaceful and very calm, it didn’t make a racket or anything."

This is the first time I have even heard of a tornado in Victoria and no one at work could ever recall one either so this is a definite weather rarity in these parts.