SEATTLE – Dozens of people get a shock Saturday afternoon as a whirlwind blew through Genesee Park. No one was hurt, but the winds were strong enough to pick up debris and send bikes tumbling.
"We were playing soccer in the upper field, and all of a sudden we saw the wind start to swirl," said Joel Mulder.
The swirl continued to blow right through a bike swap that was going on in the park.
"It went right through our tent, we were holding down our tent, and to the next tent, it destroyed the next tent," said Morgan Sherer.
"It sucked the whole tent up, and there was a funnel of papers," said Tina Bechler, program director of Bikeworks.
"Papers started swarming up in the air, like bees, it was awesome," said Mulder. "And it went up a thousand feet, easy."
"Tore apart one of our tents took our papers into the sky, but other than that it's been a beautiful day," said Bechler.
A thousand-foot tall tale, it would seem, but the National Weather Service says it did happen.
The Weather Service called it a "landspout," which they say is essentially the land-based equivalent of a waterspout, a small, relatively weak rotating column of air over water.
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