Nine-second video captures monstrous tornado as it descends on Kansas town

Asad Morani knew he should be taking shelter.

But the sight a tornado storm system — a monstrous wall of rotating black clouds — that on Monday evening had engulfed the sky, and was about to upend the tiny town of Hillsdale, Kansas, was too compelling not to capture on video.

So Morani, age 30, and owner of the Sunoco Lake-N-Dale convenience store in Hillsdale, stepped outside to shoot it.

“Just for a second,” he said.

Actually for nine. Morani, a resident of Overland Park and 2013 graduate of Blue North High School, captured a compelling still photo, as well.

He and three customers inside the convenience store then took shelter in a metal cooler where Morani sat on a case of Bud Light and, to cut the tension, cracked jokes. “Mother Nature is pissed right now. When she hits, she hits hard.”

Earlier on Monday evening, the storm system spawned an EF-2 twister that through four blocks of Ottawa, Kansas, a town of about 13,000, some 25 miles west of Hillsdale. It tore off roofs, upended and splintered trees and turned several businesses to rubble. Hillsdale, with a population of about 200 residents, was struck soon after.

The town’s Shadey Acres R.V. Park was decimated. Mobile homes were lifted, tossed and spun like toys.

No deaths were reported in either town.

The Hillsdale tornado was the third that Morani had survived. One occurred when he was too young to recall. The second was in Alabama on April 27, 2011, a day in which 62 confirmed tornadoes touched down in various parts of the state, killing 252 people.

Recovery is underway in Hillsdale.

“We’re alive,” Morani said of Monday’s tornado. “That’s all that matters.”

This story was originally published April 15, 2026 at 2:15 PM.