Confirmed tornado touches down in Myrtle Beach

A confirmed tornado touched down Friday afternoon in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, according to multiple reports.

The tornado touched down near the Ocean Forest and Long Bay area, according to news outlet WBTW. The area was not under a tornado warning.

No warning was issued because sometimes brief tornadoes can happen between radar scans, the National Weather Service – Wilmington said on Twitter.

Brief tornadoes often happen with tropical remnants, WBTW reported, and this tornado was part of the remnants of Tropical Storm Beta.

“People saw it in front of me; they started running off the beach,” lifeguard Landon Beard told WBTW. “I turn around and it’s on the shore picking up our boxes about a hundred feet out of the air. Everybody including me just ran straight off the beach. It didn’t do too much damage, just damaged our equipment, took some of the chairs from the hotels. Nobody’s hurt, everyone’s OK, but pretty scary.”

There were no confirmed reports of damage in the area as of 6:45 p.m. Parts of North Carolina remained under tornado warnings, according to the National Weather Service.