The wind got so wild Friday afternoon in one Zephyrhills neighborhood, neighbors heard it, felt it and hid from it.
One woman says the pressure was so strong and the force so powerful, the windows almost felt like they were breathing, flexing back and forth.
There was only one thing left to do: hide with her children.
“I can say at least two good minutes. Pounding and pounding and pounding, it tore one of the sides of the shed off. It was pretty bad,” Gilbertine told WFLA.
The Pasco mom says the storm came quickly and as it raged outside.
She and her children hit the floor inside their Pasco home. She described what it sounded like when a microburst blasted through their neighborhood on Hart Circle.
“It sounded like a car ran through my house and there was a trampoline. It hit the house, then it took flight and it went over the house and landed on the other side of Hart Circle. It landed upright,” she explained.
When we asked if it seemed a bit like the Wizard of Oz in Zephyrhills, she chuckled a bit and agreed.
Yeah, it was scary, the house felt like it was going in and out.”
In Green Hills Estates, homes sustained damage with siding ripped off and tree limbs in the street. One home in particular on Alpine Street was missing part of the roof. It had been peeled back by strong winds just before 4 p.m. Friday afternoon.
Mother Nature’s wrath happened in a matter of minutes.
The good news is no one was hurt.
County crews spent much of their afternoon cleaning up debris, including several large tree branches blocking a neighborhood street.
When asked how he would describe the damage from this storm on an afternoon in June, a county employee summed it up in one word.
“Normal,” he said with a grin. “This is normal, and this time of year, we get a lot of calls.”
As Pasco County trucks filled the Zephyrhills neighborhood on Hart Circle, a woman just down the street came home to quite the sight on a Friday afternoon: her fence ripped apart, left in pieces.
“I mean, my fence is gone,” said Kelly, who works in Temple Terrace and had no idea that a storm this severe struck her home.
“It’s a beautiful day right now. So, where did it go, and where did it come from?” she asked.
