Chill, winds arrive as storm assessments begin
TAMPA –
Weather service teams today determined bursts of wind from thunderstorms, not a tornado, caused damage in St. Petersburg, Hernando County and Lakeland during Tuesday night’s storms.
Pinellas and Hernando reported areas of heavy damage as a squall line moved across the Gulf coast, uncorking record rain, wind gusts up to 75 mph and hail the size of quarters.
In Polk, wind from a thunderstorm destroyed a mobile home in Lakeland but left another 20 feet away still standing, though damaged.
“It just came like all at once,” said Terry May, who was in the damaged mobile home when the storm hit about 9:30 p.m.
“There was a loud sound, and I thought, ‘Oh, my God, I need to get out of the trailer,’ ” he said.
A burst of wind about 50 mph moving across an open field caused the damage, said Paul Close, National Weather Service meteorologist who inspected the mobile home.
Gusts from thunderstorms, likely about 70 mph, caused the damage in Pinellas and Hernando, he said.
The weather service did confirm tornadoes in Hardee and Lee counties.
A tornado damaged six mobile homes in Lee County near the community of Alva and two tornadoes were spotted in Hardee County but caused no structural damage, Close said.
Tuesday’s line of storms pushed ahead of a cold front that arrived today with windy conditions and lower temperatures.
The front will usher in afternoon temperatures in the 60s the next few days and some cool mornings that forecasters expect to drop into the high 30s or low 40s around Hillsborough and close to freezing in Hernando.
Tuesday’s storms gave West Central Florida a serious drenching, setting rainfall records in Tampa, Sarasota and Fort Myers for Jan. 25.
Tampa International Airport recorded 1.4 inches, breaking the old record of 1.09 inches in 1988. Tuesday was the second record-setting day of rainfall in Tampa in a week. On Saturday, 1.42 inches broke the record for Jan. 22 of 1.3 inches set in 1957.
The weather service estimates rainfall across the region averaged from 1 to 1½ inches.
Weather service meteorologists inspected damage in Pinellas, where storms knocked down a 25-by-25-foot canopy at a gas station, trapping a woman in her car beneath it.
Inspections are the only way to evaluate whether a tornado touched down or a strong burst of wind from a thunderstorm caused the damage. The weather service issued 14 tornado warnings Tuesday.
The gas station canopy fell about 5:15 p.m. at an Exxon station at 2929 28th St. N. The canopy hit the convenience store and pinned a car and its driver. It took firefighters about 40 minutes to free the woman, who was taken to a hospital in stable condition.
The canopy toppled about the time a line of potent storms was sweeping over Pinellas and Hillsborough counties. A gust of 75 mph was reported to the weather service about two miles north of St. Petersburg, a water spout was seen near Apollo Beach and a gust of 60 mph was registered southeast of Tampa.
Also, a commercial building in the 3200 block of Morris Street in St. Petersburg lost its roof.
Hernando was the other county hardest hit by the squalls, which struck about an hour before the storms swept over Pinellas.
The winds damaged 14 to 20 structures, and about 400 power customers lost electricity. Downed power lines and fallen trees blocked a road in Masaryktown.
The winds shredded a barn storing hay near Spring Lake in Hernando County.
Most of the damage was in the south-central part of the county.
The storms affected areas that didn’t see heavy damage. Flights in and out of Tampa airport were stopped about 30 minutes and school officials canceled sports and extracurricular activities.
