Roof of Home in West Central Florida Caves in After Tornado

Photos and videos shared online Thursday showed the damage caused overnight by tornado activity as severe weather battled parts of central and northern Florida.

In Clearwater, a city in West Central Florida's Tampa Bay area, local authorities shared images early Thursday morning of the damage caused by what they described at the time as an "apparent" tornado touchdown near Clearwater Beach. Two houses were damaged in the weather event, the Clearwater Police Department said.

Clearwater police later shared a short video clip showing one of the impacted houses, which had visible damage to its roof and walls.

"A woman was asleep in the bedroom when the wall and roof came crashing in on her," Clearwater police said in a post on X, formerly Twitter. The woman was not injured, police added.

Shortly before 1:30 p.m. ET on Thursday, the National Weather Service's (NWS) Tampa Bay office told Newsweek it had "preliminary confirmation" that at least one tornado had touched down in Clearwater overnight, and at least one other had touched down further north in Crystal River, which is located in Citrus County.

Rick Davis, an emergency response meteorologist with NWS Tampa Bay, told Newsweek the NWS was in the process of compiling data to determine whether additional tornadoes may have touched down in those areas.

The two preliminarily confirmed tornadoes were EF2s, Davis said, a rating on the Enhanced Fujita Scale that means each could have encompassed wind speeds ranging from 111 to 135 miles per hour. The NWS teams that went out to survey the impacted areas "have seen a lot of damage," he added.

Local police shared other photos online of the damage, including one of a drainpipe that had smashed into a car windshield, a snapshot showing debris coating a residential street and another of an uprooted tree. The storm also temporarily knocked out power for some customers in the area, according to local energy service provider Duke Energy.

Pinellas County officials said Thursday they were assessing the damage caused by the tornado activity and urged residents with impacted homes to report the damage by submitting a digital form through the county's website.

Further north, the Citrus County School District closed all schools on Thursday due to weather-related damage that administration officials attributed to suspected tornado activity.

This severe weather follows warnings issued earlier this week as a storm that formed in the Gulf of Mexico began moving east along the Gulf Coast. Several parts of Florida were alerted that tornadoes could form in their areas late Wednesday and Thursday as the storm moved through the state.

A tornado watch was still in effect for much of northern and central Florida Thursday afternoon.