Tornado touches down in Sarasota County

SARASOTA COUNTY, Fla. – The National Weather Service confirmed a tornado touched down in Sarasota County Saturday around 3:30 a.m.

WINK News has confirmed the tornado touched down in Myakka State Park. The tornado destroyed a camper, owned by Senior Forest Ranger Mike Corgnell. Corgnell told WINK News he was asleep when it hit.

“We were in bed about 3:30, we could hear a lot of lightning… I started down the hallway I could feel the whole house starting to lift up and down. We heard a big crash outside and we waited a few minutes. We all huddled up in the living room and started peeking out windows and doors,” said Corgnell. “We looked out, I thought everything was fine and my daughter says ‘Dad where’s the camper?'”

The camper was lifted from its original position and thrown several yard away. Luckily, no one was in the camper at the time and there were no injuries.

Andrew Mckaughan, a forecaster from the National Weather Service Office in Tampa surveyed the damage Saturday. He estimated the tornado’s winds were between 70 and 100 miles per hour, making it an EF0 on the Ehanced Fujita Scale.

At 3:51 a.m, the National Weather Service put out an alert that indicated a tornado near Warm Mineral Springs in Sarasota County. The area was placed under a Tornado Warning until 4:15 a.m.