MIAMI – A tornado touched down this Sunday and destroyed dozens of homes and left several injured in West Florida, a state affected by a winter storm that left heavy snow today in neighboring states to the north.
Lee County authorities indicated that 28 houses were damaged and that at least 62 were left uninhabitable after a tornado passed on Sunday morning.
So far no fatalities but of four people who were injured by the passage of this phenomenon, which left about 7 without electricity,000 households in the area.
The National Weather Service (NWS) reported that the The tornado also touched down a little further south, in Collier County, near the tourist city of Naples.
The Florida Highway Patrol posted a video on Twitter showing a tornado crossing the busy Interstate 76 and reported that a large truck overturned in the middle of the road, although the driver suffered only minor injuries.
The strong storms this Sunday also caused significant damage in Charlotte County, and on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico, where local authorities opened a shelter for the affected people .
One of the Florida residents who have suffered the effects of this storm is Edward Murray, of 81 years ago, who told the Naples Daily News that the tornado lifted his home in the mobile home park in Fort Myers and tossed it on top of a neighbor’s house.
“ That is my house, which was turned upside down“This man told the local media that, like his daughter, they came out unharmed crawling from the rubble. “The tornado knocked me down and pushed me against the east wall and buried me under the sink, refrigerator, kitchen chairs and everything else.”
Counties in southeastern Florida, including Miami-Dade, also received alerts for possible tornadoes throughout the day .
These tornadoes are part of a severe winter storm that is leaving heavy snowfall and winds in much of the southeastern United States, where they live near 80 millions of people.
According to the specialized site FlightAware, plus 2,800 flights with origin or destination in the USA USA had to be canceled in the last hours and another 2, 200 suffered delays .
The most popular airports Connected are the Charlotte International, with 95% of its operations suspended, and the one in Atlanta, the one with the highest passenger traffic in the entire country, with the 27% of cancellations.
Regarding the power outage, according to the PowerOutage website, which reports blackouts in the US, North Carolina is the most affected region, with more than 95,000 customers without light, followed by South Carolina, with 76,, Georgia (46,000) Y Florida (21,289).
The NWS has forecast heavy snow mainly in the states of Geo rgia, the Carolinas, Tennessee and Virginia due to this cold front that will move throughout the day to the Northeast and the lower Great Lakes, until reaching Canada on Tuesday.