VENICE – A tornado moved its way through Well Field Park Monday night in Venice. Meteorologist for NOAA, Daniel Noah says the debris moved in a counterclockwise rotation.
“We can see that the roofs weren’t really attached that well to the dugouts and it acted like a sail, it caught that wind, ripped the roof off, the tornado moved south across to the strip mall,” said Warning Coordination Meteorologist, Daniel Noah.
The nearby strip mall had several trees down in the parking lot Monday night, with some damages to parked vehicles and to the Publix roof.
“To my knowledge, no one has been injured, although I’m sure they got a good scare especially if their cars started to move sideways in the parking lot,” said Noah.
Noah says that anytime we experience strong winds, you should try to get as many walls between you and the outside world so any debris in the wind does not find you.
“So if I were in the Publix, I would head up to the bathrooms and hide in there until the storm is over,” said Noah.
And if you happen to be stuck in your car, Noah says it is best to cover your head with something like a jacket in case your glass breaks and to protect yourself from the debris in the wind. Adding, we should also take precautions with storms.
“Anytime there’s a thunderstorm coming towards your area you have to be concerned about lightning, then there’s these micro bursts and these small downburst winds and of course tornadoes and some of them are going to be so quick that you are not going to be warned for in advance such as this one, I doubt radar detected anything with this one,” said Noah.
SNN’S Chief Meteorologist Justin Mosely explains,
“So many times we see storms on the radar but small features like an isolated tornado can be hard to detect using Doppler radar that can be 100 miles away also you can see things in between scans, a tornado can happen in between if it’s short-lived like that. We see the storms if we know the storm, and if we know a storm is strong or intense you need to take it and treat it very seriously,” said SNN’S Chief Meteorologist, Justin Mosely.