The National Weather Service released a survey Friday reporting that a Hurricane Milton-related tornado injured three people who took shelter in their homes on Wednesday in Glades County.
According to the survey, the tornado started its track at 2:30 p.m., in Moore Haven, on the southwest shoreline of Lake Okeechobee, and caused damage for 19 minutes.
The tornado continued in Lakeport’s Sarasota Colony neighborhood, near the western shore of Lake Okeechobee, where it demolished the second-story dwellings of three well-built homes. Then it crossed Florida State Road 78 into the Fishermans Lane neighborhood where it damaged 1920s-era homes, lofted and tossed manufactured homes and travel trailers.
The tornado also flipped a Ford Focus station wagon pushing debris for about two blocks and into a retention pond. The tornado moved to the east of the Harney Pond Canal and entered the southern limits of the Brighton Seminole Indian Reservation.
It damaged trees and pulled metal panels from roofs before entering the Brighton Seminole Village, where it damaged chickee hut roofs and demolished the baseball fields’ spectator and dugout areas in the village’s Sports Complex.
With peak winds estimated at 140 mph, the tornado’s path length was 9.1 miles and its width was 200 yards. NWS meteorologists ranked some of the damage based on wind estimates as a “violent” EF-3 on a scale of five.
Glades County Emergency Management and the Seminole Tribe of Indians of Florida assisted the NWS with the survey.
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