ELKTON, Fla. – Two barns were leveled during storms Thursday afternoon at a farm in Elkton, according to the St. Johns County Sheriff's Office.
The farm is located at 6750 County Road 305.
"We had the big barn built ourselves after we moved here. To see everything destroyed, it was just a scary thing to look out and see all of that flying," said Marcia Stewart. "I've been through a lot of hurricanes, but nothing like this."
Some power poles were also damaged. No one was injured.
"I heard a big clap of thunder and the next thing I knew, it was wind. The wind was terrible," Marcia Stewart explained.
Bobby Cain told News4Jax that there was hail all around his home and tree limbs came down in his backyard. Cain said the bottom of his home also suffered some damage. From what he saw, he thinks the storm was much more than straight line winds.
"You can look at the fields, see the crop is going in one direction and in another area, it's going that way, so it tells you that it was a twisting," said Cain.
The National Weather Service estimates this damage was caused by a microburst, with straight line winds reaching as high as 80 mph.
"A wind gust comes rapidly down from a thunderstorm, hits the ground and spreads out. What it does, it causes the debris to go in a unidirectional fashion. Things are basically going in this case, west to east," said National Weather Service meteorologist Scott Cordero.
Officials said several trees were damaged. Power lines along the highway were bent by the force of the winds. Thankfully, no one was inside the barns when the storm ripped through.
"It's easy to lift up the tin, especially with the rusted things to hold it in place. It was very easy for the integrity of that building to be compromised with those winds of 60 to 80 miles an hour," said Cordero.