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Violent downburst leaves a neighborhood shaken

Cigarette butts and a cell phone were undisturbed, but a porch's roof and walls were peeled back.

By BILL COATS
Published July 13, 2005

ODESSA - Kristin Rossman had settled onto her back porch Tuesday afternoon, watching the storm unwind over her lake, when it suddenly got serious.

"There was lightning every one or two seconds, and the lightning was right here," she said, pointing to her back yard. "You could feel the concussion in your heart."

So Rossman scurried to a walk-in closet in the center of her home. On the way, she instinctively flipped on lights and a vent. The lights flickered repeatedly. The vent made a roaring sound.

"I turned on switches, and I turned on chaos," she said.

Two doors away, Jill Yaryan, 18, stared gape-mouthed from her living room. A white swirl of wind carried branches and other debris tearing across her back yard. It blocked the view of Lake Wood, the dock and stately maple trees.

"It sounded like a giant, giant whistle, the loudest thing I ever heard in my life," Yaryan said.

The two women and their neighbors experienced a 40- 50-mph downburst from a severe thunderstorm, meteorologists from the National Weather Service said. It uprooted trees and caused minor property damage on Forrest Drive, which snakes between Lakes Wood and Elizabeth off Lutz-Lake Fern Road.

Every thunderstorm has a downburst, but usually it's simply a sudden, cool breeze, said meteorologist Rick Davis. However, the downburst in a major storm can wreak havoc, something milder than a tornado, he said.

The violence Rossman heard between 3:30 and 4 p.m. lured her from the closet.

"My heart was racing too hard to stay inside there," she said.

Through a back window, she saw a porch fan hanging from a naked metal beam. The porch's aluminum roof and screen walls had been folded upward, onto the roof of Rossman's house. A ceiling fan and hanging spider plant were up there too, facing the sky.

Rossman's cell phone remained peacefully on a porch table. Cigarette butts rested in the ashtray.

The downburst uprooted tall maples along on the shore of Lake Wood, including two behind Yaryan's home. A bed of ferns was flattened and two newly hatched birds had plummeted from a live oak.

Across the cul de sac, a tarpaulin-roofed carport was blown into a ditch and against a mobile home.

Down the street, Tammy Arnold cowered in the kitchen with her three young children as the storm tore the screened side off her porch, tossed the gas grill out into the yard and carried a paddleboat 25 feet inland from the lake front.

"I've lived in Florida all my life," said Arnold, 36, "and I've never been so scared."

Bill Coats can be reached at 813 269-5309 or coats@sptimes.com

[Last modified July 13, 2005, 00:08:08]