Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

A video shared on Facebook early Monday evening, May 5, reportedly showed a look at the sky in Drewryville that the National Weather Service’s Wakefield office confirmed featured a funnel cloud.

As of Tuesday morning, May 6, though, the NWS could not confirm if a tornado touched down in Southampton County due to the lack of any damage information.

NWS stated that what is seen in the video, shared by George Stewart, of Southeastern Virginia Storm Chasers, is consistent with the radar signature that prompted the Tornado Warning for western Southampton and Sussex counties on Monday.  

“However, we have not received any damage information at this time,” NWS officials stated early Tuesday morning. “The best radar signature is over a very rural wooded area west of Drewryville and north of U.S. 58.”

The Tidewater News reached out to NWS’s Wakefield office Tuesday afternoon and learned more information from Meteorologist Roman Miller about what “best radar signature” indicates.

“That’s at the point where the storm had the tightest rotation,” he said. “It doesn’t necessarily mean that there was a tornado on the ground, it just means that if there was a tornado, it would have occurred likely around that time or that location.”

He said it looks like the radar signature was best between 4:27 and 4:33 p.m. on Monday.

Miller shared details from the additional investigation that the NWS Wakefield office had conducted into whether or not the funnel cloud reportedly spotted in Southampton was a tornado.

“We called the 911 call center down there, and there’s no reports of damage in that area,” he said. “However, it did track over a very rural (area). It’s mainly just trees right there, a pretty dense forest.

“So with the track of where the rotation went, there’s not really any roads that were conducive for surveying for us, and ultimately with no reports of the damage anywhere and just the one video to go off of, we haven’t made our final decision yet, but at least as of this morning, we were not having any surveys planned at this time,” he added. “We’re still trying to get more information, though, just to see if there was anything, because obviously if there was, then we’d want to go out there and see what we can.”

If there was a tornado, he speculated that it likely lasted only a couple minutes at best.

Commenting on what he saw in Stewart’s video, Miller said, “That was clearly a pretty big funnel cloud. It looked like it went all the way down to the treetops. It is kind of surprising to see that and not get the damage with it, to be honest with you.”

He shared the result of the NWS Wakefield office’s efforts to place Stewart’s vantage point in his video.

“From our best guess trying to match where he was looking, it looks like that video was taken off of U.S. 58, kind of looking north-northwest or northwest toward the storm, so likely that would have been in that far western portion of Southampton County,” Miller said.

Stewart stated on Wednesday, May 7, that his location at the time of shooting the video was between Drewryville and Capron.

He shared what he and a dedicated team do as part of Southeastern Virginia Storm Chasers.

“We follow every storm, and we have a growing following,” he stated. “Our goal is to keep people safe and weather-aware way ahead of these storms.”

Learn more about Southeastern Virginia Storm Chasers at its Facebook page (www.facebook.com/groups/sevscweather).