Tornado Damages Apartment Building's Roof Near Downtown St. Pete: NWS

ST. PETERSBURG, FL — An EF-0 tornado briefly touched down near downtown St. Petersburg Tuesday at 4:23 p.m. as a powerful low-pressure storm system moved across Florida, Rick Davis, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service’s Tampa Bay office, told Patch.

“One of our employees lives out there and did a quick survey and determined it was an EF-0,” Davis said.

A tornado's damage intensity is often rated on the Enhanced Fujita Scale, according to the NWS. Their rating is based on estimated wind speeds and related damage, with the lowest being an EF-0 with three-second gusts of 65 to 85 mph and the strongest being an EF-5 with gusts more than 200 mph.

So far, the NWS has only confirmed the one tornado during Tuesday’s storms, but “a lot of straight-line wind damage,” including downed trees and power lines, caused by wind gusts of 60 mph and higher have been reported, Davis said.

Sarasota-Bradenton International Airport and MacDill Air Force Base both measured winds of 60 mph, while a wind gust of 63 mph was recorded near Clam Bayou in Gulfport, he said.

If the agency receives more reports of centralized damage, NWS teams will go into the field to review storm damage and determine whether other tornadoes touched down.

“Once it gets dark, we don’t do much in the way of storm surveys at night,” Davis said. “You miss a lot of data.”