It may have been the weakest kind of tornado, but it was enough to lift two roofs in North Fort Myers’ Tamiami Village, and ruin the porch of another. With estimated winds of 85 mph, the twister spun up at 5:14 p.m. June 28, says National Weather Service Forecaster Tony Hurt, then quickly passed.
The three damaged homes belong to snowbirds who weren’t there when it happened, says Denice Lake, the community’s business manager, “But they’ll be down here sometime this week.”
The storm was EF-0 (a zero) on the Enhanced Fujita scale, which goes up to five. “Tornadoes like this are very hard to predict, Hurt said. “((When) it’s very weak, we don’t see much of any kind of signature to indicate a tornado.” Such storms tend to happen during Southwest Florida’s hot, humid summers.
“You have sea breezes and all these different boundares colliding (so) you get a very weak, brief spin-up and this looks to be one of those cases.”
Weak or not, having the event officially classified as a tornado can be helpful for maximizing a homeowner’s insurance payout, Hurt says. “We had a phone call earlier today from someone trying to find out whether the damage incurred was tornado versus straight-line winds,” he said. “They alluded to the fact that there was a different dollar amount.”
This article originally appeared on Fort Myers News-Press: Weak or not, tornado damages homes in North Fort Myers community
Reporting by Amy Bennett Williams, Fort Myers News-Press & Naples Daily News / Fort Myers News-Press
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By Amy Bennett Williams, Fort Myers News-Press & Naples Daily News | USA TODAY Network
