A Deal photographer claims to be the second person ever to capture a ‘triple touchdown’ of tornadoes while storm chasing in the USA.

David Christie, 39, of Marlborough Road, is currently touring Midwest America, staying in Dodge City, Kansas, with storm chasing company Netweather.

He took the remarkable snap of a tornado hitting the ground in three places, on Tuesday, May 24.

He said: “I believe it has only ever been caught on camera once before.

“It was a very rare event and most chasers have never seen anything like it.

“The three tornado only touched down for about three seconds but the whole storm lasted for about three hours, producing 17 tornadoes in all!

“At one point a tornado passed just in front of us which was a tad scary.”

Mr Christie was led into photography following a fascination with the weather since he was six-years-old.

He has run his own business Crystal Memories Photography for eight years and is particularly reputable for his wedding photography.

The trip to America is a childhood dream.

He said: “There’s 15 of us in the group but I was the only one to photograph it because I was hanging out of a car as we chased it.

“As a photographer you do what it takes to get the shot.”

The next day, the group experienced an F5 tornado - a tornado which is at the top end of a scale for rating tornado intensity.

“We were only half a mile a way, which was insane,” he said.

“It lasted over two hours and was one of the longest in history so far.”

Mr Christie flew to the United States on May 16 but didn’t start storm chasing until May 18.

So far he has seen 24 tornadoes, which is a record for Netweather. He will return home on Sunday.

The dad-of-two featured on Kent Online in August 2014 when he captured a bizarre cloud formation which people believed could have been the hand of God. The image reached news in Africa and America.

More recently, he and his wife, Jodie, volunteered their time to shoot the Calendar Girls of Deal 2016 calendar in aid of Breast Cancer Now.