If only humans looked this graceful running away from a thunderstorm.

The video comes to us from YouTube user OprGrl, who filmed the clip this past Monday overlooking a beach in Ocean City, Maryland. Outflow winds ahead of the thunderstorm swept across the flat terrain, picking up the umbrellas and carrying them away like parachutes attached to metal spears.

Someone else a few hundred feet to the camera’s right filmed the exact same incident from a slightly different angle and with louder commentary:

The spray over the ocean likely wasn’t from waterspouts, as the guy states in the clip, but the strong outflow winds kicking up spray and foam as they moved ashore.

It doesn’t look like anybody was injured, but that isn’t always the case. Just five years ago, also in Ocean City, a woman was severely injured after she was impaled by a beach umbrella lofted into the air by strong winds. Afternoon thunderstorms are commonplace at the beach during the warm months, and every year we see cases where people get in the way of beach equipment blown around by thunderstorm winds. Earlier this year in March, a widely-circulated video from Brazil showed a waterspout coming ashore on a densely-packed beach, tossing debris at panicked visitors as they tried to run away from the whirlwind.

[Videos: OprGrl and Nick Wilkes via YouTube]

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