Central Coast tornadoes’ path longer than first thought
Two tornadoes that tore a miles-long swath inland in San Luis Obispo County on Wednesday cut a larger path than meteorologists originally thought during intense rain.
“These are unusually long tornado paths for coastal CA, where most such events are relatively weak and short-lived waterspouts that briefly move ashore as tornadoes,” UCLA climate scientist Daniel Swain wrote on X.
The tornadoes were the strongest in San Luis Obispo County since 1950, according to the National Weather Service.
Before Wednesday, the county had not seen tornados in nearly 20 years.
The pair of tornadoes caused damage that is considered a one on a tornado intensity scale that goes up to five, said Joe Sirard, a meteorologist with the weather service’s Los Angeles-Oxnard branch.
Assessments after the fact by weather service meteorologists found uprooted trees where the tornadoes moved through, he said.
Other common effects of EF1 tornadoes are shingles torn off roofs and wind gusts from 86 to 110 mph.
Relatively weak tornadoes of that kind can leave tracks from several hundred yards to several miles, Sirard said.
“It is somewhat unusual for them to be several miles,” he added, noting that most tornadoes that touch down in the area tend to be south of Point Conception, about 90 miles to the south.
The weather service issued an updated assessment Friday, noting that one of the tornadoes that began in the coastal area of Grover Beach actually moved 3 miles east to nearby Arroyo Grande, with a maximum width of 50 yards.
The other tornado, which began in the Los Osos area, ran for 5.6 miles with a similar peak width.
Both involved maximum gusts of nearly 100 mph.
A cold front that moved rapidly through the area Wednesday mixed with enough wind shear and coupled with an upper-level low-pressure system to cause the pair of tornadoes, Sirard said.
“With fast moving fonts you can get localized circulations in the low atmosphere,” Sirard said, noting the cold front whipped through with brief, heavy rain over the course of about an hour.