A severe storm system that spawned tornadoes tore through an area near Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., on Saturday, damaging homes and flipping cars, according to officials and witness accounts.
James Ippolito, the deputy fire chief in Palm Beach Gardens, which is about a dozen miles north of West Palm Beach, said the area had been hit by a storm that left a man trapped between a boat and a concrete piling. The man had been transported to a hospital and was in stable condition, he said.
The Palm Beach Gardens Police Department asked the public to avoid an area east of the Intracoastal Waterway “due to storm damage” and because roads were blocked.
The village of North Palm Beach said on Twitter that police officers, fire rescue teams and staff members from the Public Works Department were checking the area “after a tornado touched down around 5:45 p.m.”
The village said no injuries had been reported but it asked residents to “limit outside activity and to be alert for power lines or other dangers.”
The National Weather Service in Miami said on Saturday night that a tornado had hit near Palm Beach Gardens and that it was surveying the damage.
The Storm Prediction Center had issued a tornado watch — which meant conditions were favorable for tornadoes and severe thunderstorms — for much of Central Florida from the Gulf of Mexico to the Atlantic Ocean,
The watch remained in effect on Saturday until 10 p.m. Eastern.
Photos shared on Twitter showed the aftermath of the storm, with one person describing “feeling an extreme pressure change” as the system moved through.
In an update after the damage was reported, forecasters said that the threat of severe weather would persist in the watch area and that there could be “a brief tornado or two, wind-damage and hail.”
The reports on Saturday came after days of severe weather in parts of Florida, with three tornadoes hitting Hosford, about 30 miles west of Tallahassee, on Thursday, downing trees and power lines and damaging homes.
In Lynn Haven, about 50 miles southwest of Hosford, residents reported golf-ball-size hail.
John Keefe and Anastasia Marks contributed reporting.
