Looks like storms overnight actually did produce some damage in Pinellas County, including twelve mobile homes with major roof damage in Pinellas Park. Below is a brief list of damage and wind reports from the National Weather Service
- 11:20 – KPIE (Pinellas County) – St. Pete/Clearwater Intl Airport recorded a 53mph wind gust.
- 11:25 – Seminole (Pinellas County) – Tree fell on cars
- 11:31 – KSPG (Pinellas County) – Albert Whitted Airport recorded a 43mph gust.
- 11:48 – Tampa Bay – 56mph wind gust measured at C-CUT station in lower Tampa Bay.
- 11:49 – Piney Point (Manatee County) – Emergency Manager reported a funnel cloud near Port Manatee.
- 11:54 – Piney Point (Manatee County) – 51mph wind gust measured at Port Manatee.
Other damage reports not relayed to the NWS include trees down, powerlines down, stop lights offline and roof damage in St Pete including Downtown. According to Bay News 9 10,000 homes and businesses were without power including some in the beach communities.
For those of you asking why this storm was not severe storm warned, technically the wind gusts recorded are just bairly under severe storm criteria. Severe criteria equals wind gusts of 58mph or higher, hail the size of dimes.
At one point this storm did have a rather well defined low level rotation directly over downtown St Pete but the storm was not tornado warned. I figure one of a few reasons, the rotation was only in the low levels of the storm and not present through the mid levels and the storm was moving offshore into Tampa Bay.
