A rare tornado struck a Los Angeles suburb on Wednesday, blowing the roofs off a row of commercial buildings and sending debris tumbling into the sky and across a city block, injuring one person.
The National Weather Service sent teams to Montebello to assess the damage and later confirmed that an EF1 tornado touched down around 11:14 a.m.
“It’s certainly not something that’s typical for this region,” said meteorologist Rose Schoenfeld with the weather service.
City spokesman Alex Gilman said one person was injured and taken to a hospital in Montebello. He did not know the seriousness of the injury.
Michael Turner could hear the winds howling from inside his office in the 33,000-square-foot warehouse, which is located south of downtown Montebello. When the lights began to flicker, he went outside to find his servants gazing up at the ominous sky. He brought everyone inside.
“It got very loud. Things were flying everywhere,” Turner said. “The whole factory became one big dumpster one minute. Then when the dust settled, the place just became a mess.”
Turner said no one was hurt, but a gas line was severed, fire sprinklers were broken, all skylights were broken and a 5,000-square-foot section of the roof was “just gone”. He said his polyester fiber business, Turner Fiberfill, could be shut for months.
Turner said, “I’ve been in California since 1965. Never seen anything like this.” “Earthquake – we are used to it.”
The debris was spread over more than one city block. According to the fire department, inspectors checked 17 buildings in the area and 11 of them were red-tagged as uninhabitable. Many cars were also damaged.
Tornado Teams Asses
The rare and violent weather came amid a late-season strong Pacific storm that brought damaging winds and more rain and snow to saturate California. Two people were killed on Tuesday as the storm brought powerful gusts and torrential rain to the San Francisco Bay Area. An on-duty San Francisco police sergeant was hospitalized with life-threatening injuries after a tree fell on him on Tuesday, the department said.
The weather service also dispatched assessment teams to the Santa Barbara County city of Carpinteria, where it confirmed that an EF0 tornado struck a mobile home park on Tuesday, damaging about 25 homes with winds of up to 75 mph.
Schoenfeld said the last time the weather service’s Los Angeles office sent tornado assessment teams was in 2016 near Fillmore in Ventura County, where it was determined that a small twister had touched down.
A radar-based tornado warning was also issued Tuesday night for the Point Mugu area, west of Malibu. The warning was later canceled and the Ventura County Sheriff’s Office tweeted that there was no evidence that the tornado touched down.
The National Weather Service said the storm was decreasing across California from north to south, pushing inland across the Southwest, the Four Corners region, and the central and southern Rockies. On Tuesday, some residents of north-central Arizona were asked to prepare to evacuate due to rising water levels in rivers and canyons.
Tuesday’s wind and rain havoc from San Francisco Bay south to Monterey Bay was caused by an extraordinary drop in barometric pressure over the eastern Pacific, which meteorologists described as an “explosive cyclone.”
“Excellent. Even by the standards of what has turned out to be one of our most extraordinary winter weather in a very long time, yesterday … stands out,” the Bay Area Weather Office wrote.
Trees and power lines were downed. NBC Bay Area reported that windows were blown out of two San Francisco skyscrapers. Ferry service was disrupted as conditions were very bad. Three boats were lost and a bridge was damaged.
An Amtrak commuter train carrying 55 passengers collided with a tree and derailed near the East Bay village of Porta Costa. Amtrak and fire officials said the train remained upright and no one was injured.
Fatal storm
Five deaths were attributed to the storm. In the Bay Area community of Portola Valley, a man driving a sewer truck was killed when a falling tree struck, the California Highway Patrol said. The Contra Costa County Fire Protection District said a driver was injured and a passenger was killed when a large tree fell on a car in the community of Rosemoor.
In Oakland, a man died Tuesday night after a tree fell inside a tent near Lake Merritt.
Two people died while being treated for injuries in separate storm-related incidents at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital on Tuesday, according to city officials.
In the Monterey Bay area, gusts of up to 80 mph were reported in Santa Cruz County. Along the coastline of the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary, sea foam was blowing into the streets like huge snowflakes.
According to PowerOutage.us, about 82,000 customers were without power across the state as of Wednesday evening.
The National Weather Service said Tuesday’s storm, which was the state’s first full day of spring following an extraordinary winter, was a Pacific low-pressure system that had been interacting with California’s 12th atmospheric river since late December.
California’s unexpected bout of wet weather after years of drought also included February blizzards driven by Arctic air.
Storms have unleashed floods and loaded mountains with so much snow that roofs have been blown off and crews are struggling to keep highways clear of avalanches.