Severe storm brings tornadoes

Windy, rainy weather races across Central Floirda; reports of damage.

A tornado moved across downtown Orlando on Saturday evening, just missing a group of protesters at Lake Eola but causing some damage and taking out power lines.

As the severe weather erupted across Central Florida, a tornado was confirmed in the College Park area west of downtown and one was spotted in the evening on the north shore of Lake Monroe in Volusia County.

There were multiple tornado and thunderstorm warnings that started about 5:45 p.m. near SeaWorld and continued through the night in parts of Orange, Seminole, Volusia and Lake counties as the storm brought torrential rain along with winds in excess of 40 mph.

Throughout downtown the Orlando area, there was some debris, but no major damage could be seen on Saturday night.

Southeast of Orlando near Lake Conway, the National Weather Service said a debris area stretched from Lake Margaret to Fern Creek Avenue. Video posted on social media showed a funnel cloud or possible waterspout in that area.

More than 2,800 Orlando Utilities customers were without power, the company reported on its website.

1970s, according to a standard concept of the time.

That interchange included the double trumpet, a design that linked looping off-ramps to a pair of shared lanes where drivers either merged or put up with others who were merging to get to on-ramps. From above, the interchange sort of resembled a trumpet.

The reason for that intentionally designed congestion was that the shared lanes provided a location for toll plazas. Interstate 4 was finished in the 1960s and the tolled State Road 408 opened in the early 1970s.

Or, at least, that location was where toll plazas operated on other toll roads, including Florida’s Turnpike, which still uses that configuration for some, less-busy interchanges. But, the I-4 interchange with S.R. 408 never was equipped with toll plazas.

“Keep in mind that then, traffic wasn’t heavy,” Berenis said. back that

While the bottleneck design may have handled 1970s traffic, booming Orlando rendered the crossroads into a massive, dysfunctional mess.

Last year, traffic counts on many of the old interchange’s ramps equaled that of many of the busiest roads in the Orlando area.

The single lane of the eastbound on-ramp from I-4 to S.R. 408, for example, carried 31,000 vehicles a day on average. The three lanes of Orange Avenue through downtown handles about 24,000 vehicles daily.

Berenis said the expressway authority began to search for interchange solutions in the 1990s.

That led to a $228 million, interchange-improvement project that included two new ramps opening in 2008 to carry all traffic exiting from S.R. 408 to go eastbound on I-4, easing some congestion at the double trumpet.

The bigger solution would come with the I-4 Ultimate project, which started in 2015, rebuilding 21 miles of the interstate in Seminole and Orange counties and through Orlando.

Berenis said his agency and the state Department of Transportation solicited community input for design features, including shapes, color, texture and lighting.

They even lofted balloons into the air, tethered at specified heights for a sense of how the new ramps would appear.

“We got the community involved because we knew it was going to be very visible,” Berenis said. “We involved the city and community leaders to brainstorm on what to do to make this an attractive feature. It’s going to be around for awhile.”

DOT’s construction engineer for the Orlando area, John Tyler, recently told local officials that the interchange overhaul will cost “roughly 40 percent” of the I-4 Ultimate’s $2.4 billion budget.

DOT spokeswomen did not respond when asked for a precise cost figure, nor would they arrange an interview about the features and capabilities of the newly opened interchange, which the agency has referred to as the “centerpiece” of its biggest construction project ever.

I-4 Ultimate is to be complete at the of next year. The Central Florida Expressway Authority contributed $230 million to rebuilding the interchange.

Berenis said an interchange based on “flyover” ramps is standard now for intersections of major expressways and interstates, including I-595 and I-95 in Broward County.

What’s unique about the I-4-to-408 interchange is its relatively tiny footprint along a corridor cutting through downtown with major buildings on both sides.

For the link between I-4 and S.R. 408 – with very little room to grow outward – two possibilities were debated initially: go down or go up.

Of the interchange’s eight ramps, two opened in 2008 and five opened last month. The last will be the crowning achievement when it opens this summer.

Erected and getting final finishes, the flyover ramp from westbound 408 to westbound I-4 is more than a half-mile long and, at 120 feet tall, well above the rest of the interchange.

While the interchange is a visual spectacle of green metal and beige masonry bigger than any other structure in the city, the interchange also provides a new way of looking at metro Orlando.

For example, at 68 feet tall, the ramp from eastbound I-4 to westbound 408 looks down at Amway Arena, then wraps west to look out at Exploria Stadium of Orlando City SC and then the Citrus Bowl.

Glenn Pressimone, the new chief of infrastructure at the Central Florida Expressway Authority, said he expects smoother traffic and fewer occurrences of backups on the interchange during peak traffic.

Gone are what Pressimone called the “choke points and conflict points” of the double trumpet, which had been a regrettable fact of life for Central Florida drivers for nearly a half-century.

All evidence of that interchange soon will be demolished.