Tornadoes rake Florida, overturn planes and vehicles

MIAMI (Reuters) - Tornadoes and thunderstorms raked across central Florida from west to east on Thursday, flipping over some small planes and some vehicles, damaging homes and buildings and causing power outages, emergency service officials said.

There were no immediate reports of deaths, but there were some injuries, most of which appeared to be minor.

Powerful winds and rain tore through the Lakeland Linder Regional Airport located halfway between Tampa and Orlando, where many aircraft had arrived for an air show known as the "Sun 'n Fun Fly-in".

"We had tremendous winds, it was an unbelievable storm," airport director Gene Conrad told Reuters.

"We have numerous aircraft flipped over, a lot of smaller aircraft that were tied down in the grass," he added. The winds damaged some hangars and blew away at least one air show tent.

Police said tornado winds overturned a tractor-trailer truck near Tampa, which collided with another vehicle, closing the roadway. It was later reopened.

Another tractor-trailer blew over onto two cars on the Howard Frankland bridge near St. Petersburg.

There were also reports of some parked cars overturned.

"We don't have any fatalities, we don't have any serious injuries that we know of, some bumps and bruises," Scott Dunlap, chief of administration for Hillsborough County Emergency Operations Center, told Reuters.

He said there was wind damage to some homes and buildings and 60,000-80,000 inhabitants of the county, which includes the city of Tampa, reported power outages.

"It was basically a fast-moving cold front ... it just blossomed .. that's what generated the thunderstorms, the hail, the winds and the rain," Dunlap added.

National Weather Service meteorologists said one tornado was reported north of Tampa and another larger one swept in from the Gulf of Mexico, raked west to east across the center of the Florida Peninsula and blew out into the Atlantic.

"It was not on the ground the entire time, it went up and down pretty much right along Highway 60," meteorologist Dan Noah said.

A spokesman for the fire rescue service in Polk County, where Lakeland Linder airport is located, said the tornado passed through the Lake Wales area, downing trees and power lines.

(Reporting by Kevin Gray, Pascal Fletcher and Colleen Jenkins; Editing by Jerry Norton)