‘Never got it': Why didn't an alert go out before tornado touched down in Largo?
LARGO, Fla. (WFLA) — The National Weather Service said an EF-1 tornado touched down in Largo Wednesday.
'I have no idea whose house is blue and white,' Susan Haas said, pointing to a roof lying in her backyard.
'It's all gone': Largo residents cleaning up after tornado rips through neighborhoods
Haas was in her home in the Bay Ranch Mobile Home Park Wednesday when, suddenly, her dog, Ollie, began violently shaking.
She knew something was wrong.
'I looked outside, [and] I saw debris flying through the air,' Haas said. 'My daughter kind of freaked out.'
'I grabbed her and covered her with my body,' she continued. 'Everything kept flying by, there was nothing we could do, it was just too late.'
The national weather service said, it was an EF-1 tornado with 90 mph wind speeds.
While many Largo residents said it felt like forever, Science and Operations Officer Matt Anderson said the tornado touched down for six to seven minutes and tracked for just over two miles.
'A lot of times, these boundary collisions really don't mean too much, not too much develops,' he explained. 'In this case, there must have been some additional low-level spin in the atmosphere that the boundaries were able to stretch and develop into a tornado.'
Haas and many of her neighbors asked the same question Thursday: Why weren't they alerted?
'Never got it on the phone,' Haas said. 'It was just that fast.'
Anderson agreed, saying by the time they saw it on radar, it was too late.
'The radar didn't pick it up just because the circulation was incredibly shallow,' he explained. 'We were able to pick up the rotation on the radar located at MacDill Airforce Base, but by the time we saw that circulation, it was already gone.'
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