Experts say destructive S. California tornadoes more common than thought
Two tornadoes that caused significant damage in Los Angeles and Santa Barbara counties Tuesday were part of a series of wild weather events across California this week.
But they were not as uncommon as you might think.
“People feel like we don’t get tornadoes in California, but we do actually get them here,” said Carol Smith, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Oxnard. “To get a tornado in any one spot is very rare, but to see a few of them a year is not uncommon.”
Several trees were uprooted in Ventura Harbor Village late Wednesday after a storm brought strong winds, heavy rain and a tornado warning to the region.
There are an average of one or two tornadoes per year in the four-county area including Los Angeles, Ventura, Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties, and an average of seven to 10 per year across the state.
“It’s not like the Midwest; they are very weak, but they are tornadoes,” Smith said. “They do have rotation.”
The tornado that hit Montebello this week, damaging at least 17 buildings with wind gusts up to 110 mph, was the strongest to hit the Los Angeles area since March 1983, according to the weather service.
That 1983 twister is one of the most well known to have hit Southern California. The tornado stripped part of the roof off the Los Angeles Convention Center before roaring south along Broadway, ripping apart houses, smashing brick storefronts and overturning cars. More than 150 buildings were damaged. Thirty-two people were hurt.
“I saw it coming, a big grayish, blackish swirling ball. It went right over the top of the post office there on Broadway and hit me like a ton of bricks,” one resident told The Times.
When a twister ripped through a Pico Rivera neighborhood in 1990, damaging several homes, residents were shocked. One person told The Times: “It was like something you only see on the ‘Wizard of Oz.’ ”
In 1991, a twister ripped the roofs off several homes in Irvine.
Another in 1993 caused significant property damage in Lake Forest.
In 2008, two tornado clouds in Riverside County flipped a big rig and derailed a freight train.
In 2014, a tornado touched down in South Los Angeles during a heavy rainstorm. The twister hopscotched over a 10-block span, ripping off a roof and damaging at least five homes.
In 2016, another tornado damaged roofs and parts of up to eight commercial structures in Vernon.
In Montebello, video on social media showed a dark funnel cloud and debris flying hundreds of feet into the air. The roof was torn off a Montebello building, several others were damaged, and a 1-foot-diameter tree was uprooted completely.
One person was confirmed injured after the event. In addition, 11 mostly industrial buildings were red-tagged, meaning they were too dangerous to inhabit, and six more buildings sustained damage, according to the weather service. The unusual event also sent an HVAC unit hurtling out of the top of a building, and caused skylights to break and wood crossbeams to snap.