In a preliminary damage assessment released late Sunday, the Miami branch of the National Weather Service (NWS) said the tornado touched down near the Lauderdale Yacht Club around 5:50 p.m. on January 6 and crossed the Intracoastal waterway into Las Olas Isles. It stayed on the ground for 1.5 miles, with a maximum width of three hundred feet and estimated peak winds of 70 to 80 miles per hour.
Dawn Christensen, a Wisconsin realtor visiting for the weekend, watched the tornado from her friends' unit on the tenth floor of the Birch Pointe condominium in Fort Lauderdale.
"It was terrifying. There's no other word for it. We could see debris flying. It was like one of those things you see in a movie, not in real life," says Christensen, who was scheduled to fly back to her snow-covered home state Sunday morning.
The tornado was only on the ground and visible for a few minutes, leaving many residents in the vicinity unaware it had formed.
"We were petrified for all of the people down below. We have basements up in Wisconsin, but my friends are in a high-rise building," Christensen tells New Times. "They have storm-resistant doors, but if it would have come closer, we were going to go into the stairwell. It sounded like something blew up."
A National Weather Service alert issued around 5:45 p.m. Saturday warned of radar rotation suggestive of tornado activity, part of a fast-moving storm system heading toward the coast from Port Everglades. The 14th annual Stone Crab and Seafood Festival, a popular family event in Broward County, had just wrapped up when the warning was sent out.
The mayor said emergency responders' initial survey indicated the city avoided severe, widespread damage. Emergency crews on land and a municipal fire rescue boat responded and found battered vessels in the marina.
"While this incident has caused some disruption, we are fortunate that there were no injuries reported and that the damage appears to be manageable," the mayor said in a statement Saturday night.
Christensen tells New Times that after the twister passed through the city "fast and furious," she made her way down to a neighborhood along the Intracoastal where it had touched down.
"I was astonished at how many people probably had no idea how close they were to a real tornado," she says. "We were so surprised that there was not more damage. It could have been a lot worse."
Neighbors invited the occupant of a damaged yacht to stay in their home that night, Christensen says.
In its preliminary assessment, NWS said it first noted signs of damage in the tornado's path along Southeast 12th Street, where large branches were down in front of a home. NWS logged the impact across several neighborhoods, recording roof and power line damage, which it classified as minor.
"The tornado...traveled northeast through portions of Rio Vista Isles, across the New River and then across several streets just south of Sunset Lake before lifting in the vicinity of East Las Olas Boulevard per video evidence," NWS wrote.
Flames swirl around the wall of a tornado that struck Fort Lauderdale on January 6, 2024.
Screenshot from Dawn Christensen video
Between 2003 and 2022, Florida ranked as the state with the ninth-most tornadoes in the U.S.
Twisters in the Sunshine State tend to be less intense and deadly than those in the most active portions of Tornado Alley in the Midwest and Dixie Alley states such as Mississippi. Whereas Florida had an average of three tornado-related deaths per year between 1993 and 2022, Alabama and Missouri averaged 14 and 8 deaths, respectively. The deadliest Florida tornado outbreak in modern history struck in 1998, when more than a dozen twisters were spawned in Central Florida, killing more than 40 people.
Broward County and Palm Beach County are historical hot spots for tornado activity in Florida, along with the Tampa Bay area.
Video of the tornado ripping through Fort Lauderdale stirred up memories of the 1997 Great Miami Tornado, which passed through downtown, injuring 12 people and causing a half-million dollars in damage. Though the twister did not rank near the top of the most destructive in state history, long-range images of the vortex in the middle of a densely populated urban area made for an iconic weather event.
