Jan Wesner Childs
About two dozen buildings were damaged when a possible tornado moved through the Tampa-St. Petersburg metro area Wednesday afternoon.
The possible tornado likely touched down between St. Petersburg and Clearwater, in the town of Pinellas Park before 4 p.m.
Rob Angell, fire chief in Pinellas Park, said the damaged buildings were all industrial buildings located near each other in an area near Endeavour Way and Bryan Dairy Road.
“There were bout 20-25 buildings damaged, some of them minor and some were extensive," Angell told weather.com in a phone call Wednesday night.
Damage included roofs, downed trees and several buildings that were totally collapsed, he said.
Earlier, Pinellas Park police had tweeted that police and fire units were "working multiple locations with structural damage due to weather."
Photos showed sections ripped from buildings, vehicles overturned and trees and power poles down.
The National Weather Service declared the storm a particularly dangerous situation in a warning at 4:09 p.m., saying "a confirmed large and extremely dangerous tornado" was in progress.
Cpl. Chuck Skipper, a spokesman for the Pinellas County Sheriff's Office, told weather.com deputies were assisting with downed power lines in Pinellas Park. Nearly 14,000 homes and businesses were without power in the county as of about 6:30 p.m., according to poweroutage.us.
Skipper said he was not aware of any injuries, and that the storm had also snarled traffic.
The storm crossed Tampa Bay near the Howard Frankland Bridge around 4 p.m. The bridge carries large amounts of traffic on Interstate 275 from St. Petersburg in Pinellas County to Tampa in Hillsborough County.
A tornado warning was later issued for Hillsborough County, northeast of Tampa, based on Doppler radar indications of a potential of the same thunderstorm spawning another tornado. Damage was also reported in the Polk County town of Kathleen as the storm moved east.
The Weather Company’s primary journalistic mission is to report on breaking weather news, the environment and the importance of science to our lives. This story does not necessarily represent the position of our parent company, IBM.
The Weather Company’s primary journalistic mission is to report on breaking weather news, the environment and the importance of science to our lives. This story does not necessarily represent the position of our parent company, IBM.
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