When Debbie Jones felt a drop in pressure and her ears popping in the Holiday Pines neighborhood of Ft. Pierce, she knew it was a tornado. 'All of a sudden, the power went out. I started hearing the wind pick up and debris start hitting very loudly. So I cranked the hurricane shutters shut and bolted out of there with them,' said Megan Brown, whose boyfriend is Jones' son. The family barricaded together with their four dogs in the back of the house away from windows.
Certainly that will be a notable part of this storm, was how many tornadoes occurred within such a short period,” said Matthew Elliott, warning coordination meteorologist at the Storm Prediction Center. There have been 38 preliminary eyewitness reports of tornadoes in Florida since Wednesday night, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Storm Prediction Center. The number confirmed is expected to rise over the coming days as damaged sites are assessed.
It's definitely out of the ordinary,” said Northern Illinois University meteorology professor Victor Gensini. 'Hurricanes do produce tornadoes, but they're usually weak. What we saw today was intense and it caught many by surprise.' The ferocity of the twisters was also an unusual aspect of Milton. Eyewitness reports came as the National Weather Service issued 126 tornado warnings yesterday in the state.
At a White House briefing, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said there were reports of as many as 10 fatalities from tornadoes, but he cautioned that the number was tentative. Five deaths related to tornadoes occurred in the Spanish Lakes Country Club near Fort Pierce, on Florida's Atlantic Coast. This reflects the unexpected severity of the tornadoes spawned by Hurricane Milton.
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