About 40 planes were damaged at Lakeland Linder Regional Airport.
Trucks toppled over on roads, and cargo containers at the Port of Tampa fell like a child's set of wooden blocks.
Somehow, a large trampoline from a Riverview home went airborne, snagging on a tree branch and hanging there like a holiday ornament.
Everyone knew about Thursday's forecast: A swath of thunderstorms was bearing down on the Tampa Bay area and the threat of tornadoes would hover over the region for most of the day.
No one expected this.
"I was rattled out of my brains," said Karen Scheidt, who saw sycamores and oaks snap near her Temple Terrace home. "I'm all jiggly all over still."
Damage from Thursday's massive storm was spread over a wide region. No county in West Central Florida was spared from flooding, road closures, downed electrical lines, wind damage and power outages. Dozens of homes and businesses were seriously damaged, particularly along Interbay Boulevard in South Tampa and in a small neighborhood in Progress Village.
Streets flooded in many areas, and creeks and rivers threatened to overflow. By nightfall, tens of thousands of people were still without power.
Miraculously, there were no fatalities or major injuries.
"We're very fortunate," Tampa Fire Rescue Capt. Bill Wade said. "The Tampa Bay area has been very lucky that despite the widespread damage, no one received a serious injury."
Officials from the National Weather Service will have to determine today what damage came from tornadoes and what was caused by strong wind gusts from thunderstorms.
They'll probably find both, said Steve Jerve, News Channel 8 chief meteorologist.
"It's likely we had tornadoes embedded in the thunderstorms," he said.
A strong storm cell knocked down trees and street signs in a Largo neighborhood Thursday morning.
The weather service received numerous reports of tornadoes either moving with the clouds or skipping on the ground. Meteorologists from the Ruskin office will have to investigate damage before they officially rule that any tornadoes struck.
Scheidt and other residents are convinced twisters touched down in their neighborhoods, hurling debris and shredding trees in what they say became the scariest seconds of their lives.
Joanna Rutland, manager of a Tampa nail salon, said she was with a client about noon Thursday when the wind tore a terra cotta tile off a nearby roof and slammed it through her glass front door.
"I was crying, it was so bad," said Rutland, who is seven months pregnant.
Gino Sierra, owner of the Mr. Empanada restaurant a few doors down, said he saw debris and a white wall of rain blow by.
"It was 15 seconds of hell," he said. "It was pretty terrifying."
This Citgo station at MacDill Avenue and Interbay Boulevard took a hit.
There were wind gusts of 60 mph or more, either from tornadoes or downbursts from thunderstorms. Rainfall amounts ranged from 3 inches to more than 8 inches.
Officially, Tampa International Airport received 3.99 inches of rain as of 8 p.m., breaking the record 2.69 inches of rain for the date in 1931, said Tyler Fleming, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Ruskin.
"This was a cold-front storm like they see in Alabama," Jerve said. "We don't deal very much with this kind of weather."
The wild weather hammered buildings and homes on Interbay Boulevard in South Tampa, ripped off roofs at gas pumps at several gas stations across the county and flipped one semitrailer on the Howard Frankland Bridge and another on Interstate 75.
Tampa Electric Co. representatives said as of 5:30 a.m. Friday that 25,000 customers were still without power after more than 87,000 of the company's 667,000 customers faced outages due to the storm.
The storms delayed dozens of flights at Tampa International Airport for a minimum of 45 minutes and up to several hours.
After-school activities for all Hillsborough County schools, including indoor and outdoor athletics events, meetings and night classes, were called off. No county schools were damaged, but six buildings at the main campus of the University of South Florida flooded or had leaky roofs.
By late Thursday afternoon, the Bay area chapters of the American Red Cross and The Salvation Army had mobilized volunteers and opened shelters. Meals were provided for families without power.
Firefighters evacuated people from homes on West Tyson Street in South Tampa. At Progress Village, more than 25 homes were heavily damaged. Some had collapsed roofs; others were ruled uninhabitable.
Hillsborough Sheriff David Gee said he was concerned that some Progress Village residents might be trapped in their homes. Deputies went door to door Thursday night to check.
A downed power line, parts of a tree and shreds of a wooden fence landed on Mickey Keenan's property on Interbay Boulevard. "I didn't have any trees. All these trees flew in from somewhere. This fence, I don't know where it came from," said the 37-year-old lawyer.
Firefighters were going door-to-door on West Tyson Street in South Tampa, asking people to leave and helping them evacuate. Parts of Cleveland Street, Azeele Street and Swann Avenue were close to impassable.
In Pasco County, State Road 54, U.S. 19 and Grand Boulevard flooded.
A custodian at Gulfside Elementary School in Holiday was struck by lightning and taken to a hospital. School officials did not release the custodian's name but said the victim, who was alert, was taken to the local hospital as a precaution.
The storms closed Pasco-Hernando Community College, and students and faculty members were told not to come to class.
Farther south in Pinellas County, several planes were flipped upside down at St. Petersburg-Clearwater International Airport. The Sunshine Skyway was closed for much of the day to high-profile vehicles such as large trucks and recreational vehicles.
Tarpon Springs opened a sandbag station as residents braced for flooding at high tide.
Emergency management officials in Polk County said four tornadoes touched down.
The weather wreaked havoc at the annual Sun 'n Fun Fly-In at Lakeland Linder Regional Airport when the roof of a large tent collapsed with 70 people inside. Six people with minor injuries were taken to a hospital.
"The doors started buckling," said Lakeland police Officer Adrian Rodriguez, who was in the tent. "We got kind of nervous, and then the beams started to fall. We all took off running."
Once the storm passed, Rodriguez and other officers went into emergency mode.
"We immediately thought about the people who were camping out," Rodriguez said. "The sergeant and I jumped in there. We went out on rescue missions."
Out on the runway, dime-size hail blasted everything, and about 40 aircraft were damaged.
Despite the damage, Sun 'n Fun president John Burton said the event will resume at 8 a.m. today and run through the weekend as planned. The Fly-In closed to the public on Thursday after the front moved through Polk so crews could begin cleaning up wreckage.
The airports that i am used too, have mandatory tie down locations, when the planes are parked, too keep them from blowing away in high winds. Those must have been some really strong winds too tear all those planes off of there tie down locations?