MARTIN COUNTY, Fla. — The National Weather Service confirmed that an EF0 tornado touched down in Martin County on Monday. That is no surprise to those who witnessed it.
"It actually looked like what you saw in [the movie] 'Twister,'" Michelle King of Palm City said. "I felt like I was in the movie."
King and her horse Tyler were walking back from a barn at Dreamland Farms late Monday afternoon when she spotted the tornado.
"It was crazy how fast it was spinning," King said. "You could actually see the debris spinning in a circle. It was wild."
She yelled at the two girls working at the barn to get inside and then quickly ran inside her home.
"Running from a tornado was not on my list of things to do yesterday," King laughed.
The pig barn at the farm took the worst of the damage. There are broken fences and snapped trees scattered throughout the property.
"This is our riding arena or what was our nice course of jumps," Kaitlin Larschan said while looking out over at the flooded area on the farm.
Less than 2 miles away in the Canopy Creek neighborhood, residents saw the storm come right through their community.
"We looked back here in the corner of the lot, and we could see the neighbors' trampoline that was 400 feet in the air," resident Mike McCarthy said. "It was circling like Dorothy from the 'Wizard of Oz.'"
McCarthy lost a few tiles from his roof and a home under construction next door was damaged.
The reaction from many residents that WPTV spoke with who have lived here for years — and through many hurricanes — was this was something they had never experienced and hope not to again in the future.
