Rare tornado near Los Angeles rips of roofs

“We heard a big bang,” said Miriam Braxton, a nearby witness who recalled the events in an interview with CBS, BBC’s US media partner. “We thought it was a car accident.”…reports Asian Lite News

The Los Angeles area was hit by a rare tornado which was the strongest one since March 1983, according to the US National Weather Service (NWS).

The tornado “briefly touched down” in an industrial park and warehouse district in the city of Montebello on Wednesday, Xinhua news agency quoted NWS Los Angeles as saying on Thursday.

Seventeen structures were damaged and 11 structures had significant damage. A tree was uprooted and a power pole was snapped with the transformer ripped off.

Cars were damaged with windows destroyed, according to NWS Los Angeles. At least one person was injured after the tornado hit the city, local officials said.

Tornadoes are rare in California, with fewer than 10 per year on average, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Most tornadoes in the state are small and short-lived.

Wednesday’s intense weather came as California has been hammered by at least 12 atmospheric rivers this season, which led to heavy rainfall, snowfall, and flooding.

“We heard a big bang,” said Miriam Braxton, a nearby witness who recalled the events in an interview with CBS, BBC’s US media partner. “We thought it was a car accident.”

Braxton works next door to the building where some of the most severe tornado damage occurred, she said. The twister nearly ripped the entire roof off that industrial building, the BBC reported.

“We didn’t know what to do. We hid under our desks,” she said.

She described a “huge cloud of debris” filled with trash, nails, and roof tiling that she said rammed into her car.

Officials said the tornado touched down in Montebello just after 11:00 local time (18:00 GMT), damaging 17 total buildings, but 11 so severely that they have been deemed too dangerous to inhabit.

After assessing the damage, the National Weather Service rated the tornado on the Enhanced Fujita Scale – a measure used to determine tornado power and impact – as an EF-1. The lowest rating is 0, the highest is 5.

During a press conference, a NWS official called tornadoes in the Los Angeles area “quite rare”. He added that they do typically land in other parts of California, the third biggest state by geographical area in the US.

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