Gwen Salata of Fort Myers had put her baby down for a nap as usual just after noon on Wednesday as she and her family awaited the arrival of Hurricane Milton. Her husband, Matthew, had gone a few streets over to help a buddy put up his shutters.
When she got an alert on her phone that a tornado was close by, she grabbed the baby, her 5-year-old son, and their yellow lab, Luna, and huddled with them all on the kitchen floor. That room is in the center of the house and has no windows.
So she couldn’t see the tornado, of course, but she did hear what she thought was ...an early hurricane?
“It was kind of loud. But it just sounded like tons and tons of wind,” she said.
Matthew, meanwhile, could see the tornado, and it was doing incredible things.
“He watched it pick up his buddy's boat and then drop it.” A boat and a trailer, Gwen added. “The neighbor's car, it picked the car up and moved it.”
Then suddenly, Gwen said, it got quiet.
“The moment it was all gone, I could hear it, like it was, you could tell it left. I could tell the tornado was gone because there was no sound. It was just odd and eerie.”
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