This account is from J.D in Gulf Breeze, Fla., concerning the tornado and very heavy rain in and near Pensacola this morning. Very interesting information:
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Hi! Just a quick note to let you know we are OK. Don’t know if you have heard but, we have had some really bad weather this morning. There have been some tornados in the area…at the beach and downtown Pensacola and up near the Cordova Mall area. A pretty good size tornado went right through the middle of downtown Pensacola this morning around 10:00-10:30 with a lot of damage reported. Several houses totally destroyed and lots and lots of roofs gone and trees down etc. There are 25-50 cars
flipped and thrown about up in the mall area with the Target and Office Depot and other stores with roofs blown off and lots of other damage too.
We have had over 10 inches of rain since midnight right here in the Gulf Breeze area,…minor flooding but no other damage. We did have a tornado warning for Gulf Breeze from around 11:30 to 12:15 with a little damage reported near here in the Oriole Beach area, ( a mile or so east of our house ). Boy, we sure needed the rain but not all in one day!!!
The local TV station has a camera mounted on top of the Crown Plaza Hotel right in downtown and caught live footage of the tornado as it went through town and moved through to the northeast towards the mall and airport area. CNN and The Weather Channel have picked up the footage and have been showing it so you might get to see it there this evening.
Anyway…we are both OK and no problems here other than getting a scare or two. There was almost NO WARNING with any of this except for the warning for the Gulf Breeze tornado at noontime. The one at the beach happened around 8:00-8:30 this morning and was probably a waterspout that came ashore and caused a little damage to several homes there. The tornado downtown just came out of nowhere and caught everyone by complete surprise! It is VERY UNUSUAL for us to have a tornado here at the coast like this except in conjunction with a hurricane making landfall. We get waterspouts ( small tornados over open water ) quite often…have been several this spring and summer and we haven’t had much in the way of storms or rain here this year. The waterspouts usually are small and fall apart as soon as they move to land and rarely cause any damage at all. I have been out in the Gulf in boats and seen waterspouts several times and watched one move on the beach and fall apart a couple of summers ago.
We are expected to get more rain through Friday but as it goes now, don’t need anymore right now. I had just put winter weed-n-feed and insecticide on the yard the first of the week and guess it is all getting washed away now…Oh well…drought or floods…no middle ground for us, I guess. Just hate that I have probably wasted $60 bucks on fertilizer and stuff for the yard, LOL.
Just wanted to let you know that we are OK and hope that some of this rain makes it’s way up to you and over into Georgia and that way. Have seen the drought is very bad in the Georgia and Tennessee and Carolinas area and getting worse all the time.
