The power was lost to Ramsay Street and Georgia Brooks (Saskia Hampele) vanished from her house while she was recovering from a throat operation, leaving her family worried for her whereabouts.
As the storm worsened, Lou Carpenter became trapped under a fallen beam at Harold's Store and his friend Susan Kennedy (Jackie Woodburne) was forced to perform an emergency tracheotomy on him when he began choking on a piece of food.
Bailey Turner (Calen Mackenzie) watches the news reports with interest when a severe weather warning for Erinsborough and the surrounding areas is issued.
As the storm hits, Georgia Brooks (Saskia Hampele) goes missing suddenly along with her fiancé Kyle Canning's (Chris Milligan) dog, Bossy.
As the clean up operation begins, Lou inadvertently reveals to Matt Turner (Josef Brown) that his wife Lauren (Kate Kendall) kissed Brad Willis (Kip Gamblin).
Meanwhile, Daniel and Imogen Willis (Ariel Kaplan) rescue an injured wombat, and Nate Kinski (Meyne Wyatt), an Afghanistan war veteran, helps Susan overcome her post traumatic stress.
Executive producer Jason Herbison first teased the storyline in June 2014, telling Digital Spy's Daniel Kilkelly that the cast and crew were in the middle of filming "a major event" that would screen later in the year.
[4] On 15 August 2014, it was announced that a tornado would hit Erinsborough, resulting in "long term repercussions for Ramsay Street", while a number of on-going storylines would "come to a head as the danger escalates".
[5] A few days later the first characters to be involved in the tornado plot were revealed to be newcomer Daniel Robinson (Tim Phillipps) and his girlfriend Amber Turner (Jenna Rosenow), whose "honeymoon period" comes to a halt by a revelation during the storm.
[6] As Amber and Daniel experienced their first full argument, the storm intensified and the tornado ripped the roof off their car, forcing them to seek shelter in the garage.
[7] It was later announced that long standing character Lou Carpenter (Tom Oliver), would be placed in a life-threatening situation when the tornado causes the roof of Harold's Store to collapse on him, while a piece of food becomes lodged in his throat.
[8] Fellow long standing character Susan Kennedy (Woodburne) was trapped with him and when she could not lift the beam to help, she called her husband, Karl (Alan Fletcher).
[7] Other characters caught up in the storm included Lauren Turner (Kate Kendall), who was forced to shelter with Brad Willis (Kip Gamblin).
[10] Georgia Brooks (Saskia Hampele) and Bossy the dog went out into the storm, causing her fiancé, Kyle Canning (Chris Milligan), to try to find them.
[16] The first episode of The Erinsborough Tornado was watched by 329,000 Australian viewers, making Neighbours the top rated program on digital multichannels that night.
[24] Her colleague, Stephen Downie, disagreed and argued, "compared with Toadie's (Ryan Moloney) ability to bed hot chicks, a tornado is probably one of the more believable Neighbours storylines.
[18] Pobjie observed that the episode broadcast on 1 September contained mostly "background rumbling and rain noises" and viewers had to wait until the end for "some hardcore storm opera".
[26] He commented, for all the production effort involved – there was a tidy master shot of an upended power pole across a crushed car roof, and some nifty handheld camera work – what was disappointing about Tornado Week on Neighbours was how neatly it was rolled out.
Strutt assessed that "the freak weather event is a standard soapy plot: all that death and destruction nicely sets up a myriad of storylines revolving around desperate sexual encounters, proposals and missing characters.
"[29] Ben Fenlon from the HuffPost called the serial's efforts in the storyline a "poor excuse for a CGI tornado that loomed over Ramsay Street striking completely no fear in to anyone who saw it.