National Weather Service Confirms EF-0 Tornado Touched Down In Hialeah
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HIALEAH (CBSMiami) -- The National Weather Service has confirmed an EF-0 tornado did indeed, touchdown in Hialeah during severe storms Sunday night.
Experts from the National Weather Service were in the area early Monday morning conducting a storm survey.
An EF-0 rated tornado has winds between 65 - 85 mph. Sunday's tornado reached 85 mph. The path of the tornado was a half mile and the width was 100 yards, according to the NWS.
It happened just before 8:00 p.m. Sunday night near West 17th Avenue and 76th Street. It ripped a path of destruction that left a neighborhood full of debris and others right beside it untouched.
"It was horrible, it was pretty bad," said Ibrahim Galvez.
Surveillence video shows the moment it rolled through his back yard. He was home alone with his kids and says they scrambled to the bathroom for what seemed like just 15 seconds of terror.
"Like a couple trains, sounded like they were outside my house, my furniture is missing," he told CBS4's Rielle Creighton.
"It's not damaged it's missing?" asked Rielle. "Yeah somewhere in the lake or probably my neighbor's house," he said.
The missing furniture showed up in a mangled pile in the yard of his neighbor two houses away. There was a giant pile of twisted metal that used to be an awning in Garrett Hays' yard and the remains of the patio furniture.
Farther down the street sat a trampoline, a nearby park had downed metal fences and the winds were strong enough to toss a heavy dumpster and rip pieces of the roof off nearby businesses.
Power was knocked out in a two-block area and the power outages spread all the way to Hialeah Hospital.
However, Capt. David Rodriguez, a spokesman for the Hialeah Fire Department said power was restored fairly quickly to the hospital and FPL crews were working on restoring power to the homes.
Large trees from a nearby park were uprooted and blown into the street and a couple of box trucks were flipped over by the powerful wind.
No injuries or structural damage was reported.