Strong storms take down trees, cause outages in central Florida

ORANGE COUNTY, Fla. — Crews are cleaning up after strong storms moved through central Florida Saturday night, causing power outages and taking down trees in some areas.

The storms left a mess after hitting the Lake Sybelia area of Maitland around 8:30 p.m.

"I was scared. I literally jumped and I like knelt down for a second. I was scared," resident Christina Schlemmer said.

Schlemmer said lightning came extremely close to her front door around the same time a tree went down on Sybelia Avenue. The tree took down power lines, causing a brief outage that officials said affected around 300 customers.

"I guess the surge was so strong that our computer doesn't work no more," Schlemmer said.

Several Duke Energy crews were called to the neighborhood to restore power. Officials said there were several other brief power outages in Seminole, Volusia and Marion counties.

Crews could be seen cleaning up the neighborhood and removing tree debris Sunday morning. Power has been restored to all areas, according to officials.

WFTV