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2 Tornadoes struck Pasco, National Weather Service says

Tribune photo by ANDY JONES

Workers survey the scene of a power pole down on Washington Street in New Port Richey on Tuesday.

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By NEIL JOHNSON | The Tampa Tribune

Published: April 14, 2009

Updated: 04/15/2009 06:57 am

The National Weather Service said two tornadoes hit Pasco on Tuesday. One hit Wesley Chapel with winds of 80 miles per hour and the other one hit the Trinity area with winds of 95 mph.

Contractor David Miller got the thrill of his life Tuesday when he said he nearly drove his pickup truck into a funnel cloud about 8:30 a.m. as it swept east across Ridge Top Drive, a two-lane suburban street south of New Port Richey.

Miller said he had just left his office when a tree branch flew past. Moments later, the funnel cloud appeared in front of him.

He slammed on the brakes, shifted into reverse and gunned the engine. Even as the tires smoked, the vehicle inched toward the funnel cloud. Hail pounded the truck and a wrought-iron fence flew by.

A few seconds later, the twister moved away from him, allowing the vehicle to break free. Miller said he sat there for a few moments in stunned silence.

Weather service meteorologists traveled to Wesley Chapel to inspect damage and determined that a small tornado, ranked EF1 on the Enhanced Fujita-Pearson Scale, struck the central Pasco community. Tornadoes with an EF1 rank have winds between 73 and 112 mph. The largest tornadoes have been measured at EF5, with winds exceeding 260 mph, according to the weather service.

The area was hit hard by winds and heavy rain. Roofs were partly ripped off on some houses in the 5500 block of Treig Lane, north of State Road 54 and east of Curley Road. Screen enclosures were twisted and torn. A Toyota Highlander was flipped over in a driveway.

The Aberdeen subdivision had scattered damage, with small trees uprooted and portions of fences knocked down.

The most extensive damage happened at 5530 Inkley Court, where the home's roof was damaged, part of the siding was peeled off and a fence in the backyard had collapsed. The house next door also had damage, including the partial collapse of a back-porch roof.

Juan Rodriguez, who lives nearby, said he was taking a nap at home when the storm hit, but the wind became so strong that he was roused from his slumber.

"It got so dark I couldn't see anything," Rodriguez said.

He said his house wasn't damaged, but he was shaken by what happened to the house on Inkley Court.

"I would think a small tornado came through here," Rodriguez said. "It's devastating."

The line of storms left about 9,000 customers in Pasco and 1,200 customers in Pinellas County without power.

As of 4 p.m., there were still about 3,000 Progress Energy customers in Hillsborough, Pasco and Pinellas without power, company spokesman Tom Leljedal said.

Utilities told emergency officials that power would be restored quickly for most.

It took longer near part of Washington Street in New Port Richey, where workers needed to replace a pair of power poles felled by the wind, Pasco Emergency Management Director Jim Martin said.

Harold Dunn, who has lived on Washington about seven years, said there was lightning followed by a loud pop that he guessed was a transformer blowing. Other than the fallen power poles, the storm left Dunn unimpressed.

"It was no big deal. Just a thunderstorm," he said.

Dunn intends to spend the rest of the day in a motor home on his property with its generator powering his laptop computer.

Martin said there was damage to pool cages, roof tiles and trees in the Trinity Oaks subdivision near Holiday, where power lines were also knocked down.

Steve and Shari Corsetti were eating breakfast in their home on Middlesex Drive in Trinity when a gust of wind blew through, rattling the screens of their lanai. The lights flickered. Then the power went out.

"It was just a little storm, but it was as gusty, if not more, than those storms in '04," he said.

Afterward, Steve Corsetti surveyed the damage around his neighborhood and found ripped up fences, downed tree limbs, damaged pool cages and broken roof tiles.

"There's debris all over the place," he said.

At the nearby Chelsea Place Shopping Center, 1346 Seven Springs Blvd., workers were forced to rope off a portion of the center because a rooftop air conditioner had become dislodged and hung precariously over the edge.

Behind the center, wind toppled trash bins and hurled them "like matchboxes" into a fence, Corsetti said.

"You can literally see the path where the tornado went," he said.

On Kinsmere Drive in Trinity Oaks, the storm's sudden arrival forced residents to take refuge as it plucked off roof tiles and snapped limbs from trees.

When the wind picked up about 8:45 a.m., Sharon Spencer and her daughter Kristen, 15, went into a closet.

"This was hurricane-force winds in a split second," Sharon Spencer said.

Neighbor Jerry Kingsley and his 3-year-old daughter also took refuge in a closet. Tiles from Spencer's roof ended up in Kingsley's pool.

Troy Casper, who runs a computer business out of his home on Kinsmere Drive, was about to drive his children to school when the storm blew through, sending tree limbs flying and producing a few minutes of hail.

"It was a little scary for the kids," said Casper, who surveyed the scene from his car.

In the Country Place subdivision, at State Road 54 and Duck Slough in west Pasco, the storm blew the roof from a neighbor's carport and screen room on Central Park Boulevard about 8:30 a.m., said Pam Parker.

A trained spotter for the weather service in Odessa measured a wind gust of 68 mph.

The Pinellas County Sheriff's Office said wind damaged a home at 2858 Darbys Run in north Pinellas. There were no injuries.

Also, trees and power lines were knocked down near Tarpon Springs and pea-size hail fell in Citrus Park, the weather service reported.

The storms arrived ahead of a strong cold front that started moving over the Gulf Coast before dawn.

Reporters Rich Shopes, Keith Morelli, Ronnie Blair, Stephen Thompson, Todd Leskanic, WFLA reporters Jennifer Leigh, Jeff Patterson and photographer Jay Connor contributed to this report.

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