Storm front loaded with potential tornadoes plows through Florida

As a powerful late-Winter cold front marches toward the Eastern Seaboard, tornado watches have been issued for North Florida into South Georgia.

Florida’s Panhandle, Tallahassee, and the Big Bend areas were already pounded by thunderstorms and high winds Saturday night into Sunday morning. Northeast Florida and South Georgia were bracing for the storm.

The National Weather Service (NWS) station at Jacksonville International Airport issued watches and warnings Sunday morning. A tornado watch is in effect for North Florida until 3 p.m. Sunday.

According to NWS statements, scattered thunderstorms are expected through Sunday evening, and wind gusts could reach 50 to 70 mph.

The threatening weather caused PGA officials to move up tee times Sunday morning to begin at 8 a.m., hoping to get the final round of The Players Championship golf tournament completed before the heavy weather hits Ponte Vedra Beach at the expected 2 p.m. hour.

The powerful cold front is the same system that has already hammered several areas of the United States.

Violent tornadoes and high winds decimated homes, wiped out schools and toppled semitractor-trailers as the monster storm that also produced dust storms and icy conditions killed at least 33 people across the central and southern U.S.

Missouri resident Dakota Henderson said he and others rescuing trapped neighbors found five bodies scattered in the debris Friday night outside what remained of his aunt’s house in hard-hit Wayne County. Scattered twisters killed at least a dozen people in the state, authorities said.

“It was a very rough deal last night,” Henderson said Saturday, not far from the splintered home from which he said they rescued his aunt through a window of the only room left standing. “It’s really disturbing for what happened to the people, the casualties last night.”

The dynamic storm, earning an unusual “high risk” designation from weather forecasters, was blamed for deadly dust storms in the nation’s midsection, icy winter weather in northern parts of the country and severe thunderstorms on Sunday, including on the West Coast.

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Material from The Associated Press was used in this report.