Photo: CBS 12
The National Weather Service confirms an EF-0 tornado moved through northwestern Palm Beach County on Monday evening.
"No warning. It was just rain and all of a sudden it just picked up and it came through and knocked the fans off the barn."
Michelle Lacy of Loxahatchee is one of many who suffered damage on their properties. She and her mother spent time yesterday picking up branches knocked off of trees.
Her neighbor, Patrick McElwee, tells CBS 12 News that ten trees were toppled onto a canal bed in his yard.
"It went pretty quick from a heavy rainstorm to just, all the trees were completely bent over and then the trees started coming down."
"Terrible. Scared me and my granddaughter. I turned around, I heard a little noise, I heard the wind and the rain was just doin', and I said that don't look good and I grabbed my granddaughter and we ran into the closet," said Camille Haun, who lives on 78th Place North.
At Haun's home, a tree was toppled by the strong winds and fell on her house. She says it did not put a hole in her roof.
The National Weather Service sent a meteorologist from its Miami office to survey the damage from the EF-0 tornado.
"There may have been a couple of instances where it could've briefly touched down. but for the most part, fortunately, as tornadoes go or as these type of storms go, it was a pretty low end event. EF-zero type damage. So we're talking winds 70-75 miles per hour perhaps at most and hard to find a well-defined tornadic circulation on the ground. But there could've been a couple of points where it may have briefly touched down," said Robert Molleda, Meteorologist-in-Charge, National Weather Service, Miami.
The tornado started in an area near Lion Country Safari, before moving through Loxahatchee, Westlake and the Acreage.
No injuries were reported.