Multiple Tornadoes Hit Florida as Severe Weather Causes ‘Significant Damage’ to Buildings, Area

Severe thunderstorms and a number of tornadoes have been reported in northern and central Florida on Thursday, and the storms caused some damage in the Tampa Bay/Clearwater area overnight, according to local media reports. 

Local television station FOX 13 posted a video early Thursday of a tornado forming near Dunedin, north of Clearwater, while another posting on X, formerly Twitter, showed two waterspouts caught on webcams around Clearwater Beach.

A woman asleep in her Clearwater Beach home escaped injury when the roof and wall collapsed on her, police said.

FOX 13 reported that strong winds from the thunderstorms blew out windows in a number of storefronts at a strip mall in Dunedin and scattered debris around the shopping plaza. 

Several dumpsters and a truck were overturned, FOX 13 reported. 

There were no reports of injuries. 

On the Atlantic Coast, the National Weather Service in Jacksonville issued a tornado warning for the northeastern part of Flagler County just north of Daytona Beach until later Thursday morning. 

The Flagler County Sheriff's Office responded to a report of a tornado, Florida Today reported, saying "there is some significant damage in the area" but no injuries have been reported. 

The Citrus County Sheriff's Office posted on X that a tornado had touched down in Crystal River on the Gulf Coast and that several roads had been closed. 

The unstable weather is due to a low pressure area near a warm front in the Gulf of Mexico that is mixing with a band of tropical moisture to bring heavy rainfall to central and eastern Florida and parts of the Southeast United States. 

"Many locations could see 2 to 4 inches of rain with locally higher amounts possible across the Florida panhandle and northern Florida peninsula. Instability near the frontal boundary itself should allow for a threat for severe weather as well across northern Florida," the National Weather Service said.