Tornado In Montebello

[erik]

Rick probably knows about this now; but for those who don't, in a winter and the first week of spring that has seen Southern California get walloped by as many as thirteen Atmospheric River storms from the Pacific, plus one from the Arctic in late February that brought snow down to the shoreline, yesterday, an industrial park in Montebello, a city just ten miles east of downtown Los Angeles, was nailed by a tornado. The National Weather Service classified this as an Enhanced Fujita scale 1 (EF-1) twister, with winds estimated at close to 110 miles per hour. Although it was on the ground for maybe less than a minute and was only ten yards wide, it damaged seventeen buildings in the park, eleven of them so badly that those structures were red-tagged (no entry allowed). Only one minor injury was reported.

If this twister had touched down just a few hundred yards away, however, it would have hit a residential zone, and then it would have been a much different and much more tragic story.

[sliderocker]

Mar 23, 2023 9:19:54 GMT -5 erik said:

Rick probably knows about this now; but for those who don't, in a winter and the first week of spring that has seen Southern California get walloped by as many as thirteen Atmospheric River storms from the Pacific, plus one from the Arctic in late February that brought snow down to the shoreline, yesterday, an industrial park in Montebello, a city just ten miles east of downtown Los Angeles, was nailed by a tornado. The National Weather Service classified this as an Enhanced Fujita scale 1 (EF-1) twister, with winds estimated at close to 110 miles per hour. Although it was on the ground for maybe less than a minute and was only ten yards wide, it damaged seventeen buildings in the park, eleven of them so badly that those structures were red-tagged (no entry allowed). Only one minor injury was reported.

If this twister had touched down just a few hundred yards away, however, it would have hit a residential zone, and then it would have been a much different and much more tragic story.

Huh? The National Weather Service rated the tornado as an EF-1? I'd say it was more likely an EF-0 as I wouldn't put those winds as being anywhere close to 110 mph. An EF-0 tornado can have winds up to 72 mph and a tornado that small is really capable of doing the amount of damage seen in that video. That's like some of the tornadoes we had back in February. Most were EF-0s, though some of the EF-0s did enlarge to EF-1s and then back down to EF-0s. EF-1s are also typically on the ground longer than 17 minutes and much more destructive. Regardless, I'm glad the tornado gave up the ghost as many EF-0s go on to become EF-5 tornadoes, totally destructive monsters.When you see the damage done by the larger tornadoes (EF-3s, EF-4s, EF-5s), you think the areas and communities hit by these storms were hit by a nuclear bomb. It is just devastating to see that kind of damage and to think of the casualties and injuries that occurred (such as what occurred in Mississippi recently).

The tornadoes in Mississippi and Alabama were EF-5s, though I believe the NWS classed them as EF-4s. The NWS is going to be changing their Enhanced Fujita Scale as some of the tornadoes classed EF-4s have really been EF-5s. The NWS determines what a tornado was by the damage that occurred, not the size of the tornado. The tornado that hit El Reno, Oklahoma in 2013 was classed by the NWS as an EF-4, even though the tornado was 2.6 miles in width and had strong winds around the tornado that were blowing around 80-90 mph and took up another 1.5 miles in circulation. There was no way that tornado was an EF-4. And many weathermen around the country protested the NWS's classification of that storm as EF-4. It was truly a monster.

Surprisingly, here in Oklahoma, we squeaked by with very few tornadoes in March and this month so far. Guess we can chalk that up to La Nina, though when it comes to Mother Nature, I'm suspicious of such gifts because I know that somewhere else down the road, she may be saving several surprises for Oklahoma. We haven't been hit by large tornadoes in quite some time and I'm thinking Mother Nature is tricking us.

On the other hand, all the snow California got...I'm jealous those in California got that much snow. It was incredible . I knew from seeing those incredible snow amounts, a lot of the lakes were going to be refilled with water, enough to end the drought. The amount of flooding was mind blowing and to see rivers like the Kern River flowing like rapids, I was just shocked. I don't know how many people were put out of their homes by the rising flowing waters, and are now waiting for the homes to be repaired or rebuilt, but the snows and rains put 78 trillion gallons of water into the lakes and only small area of California was in a drought.

Wonder what the rest of the year has to offer, weather wise?

[erik]

It was the police and fire department officials that had asked National Weather Service experts to both inspect the damage at the industrial park and watch the various videos of the event, and they determined that the damage was of a piece of a wind event of 110 miles per hour, and the visual evidence was that of a twister, measured as an EF-1.

It's not only the winds that were the problem. In even the most minor tornado, the air pressure is extremely low; and it is that catastrophic drop in air pressure that causes even the strongest buildings to basically explode during a twister. In one of the videos that was shown only on television in Los Angeles, a teacher at a nearby school tried to open the door to see where the storm was, and she was nearly sucked out as if she were being drawn into a vacuum cleaner.

For the record, tornadoes are (at least at this point in time) rare here in California, but they aren't unprecedented. This was the strongest twister recorded in the Los Angeles Metro Area since March 1, 1983, when a twister measured as an EF-2 touched down in south central Los Angeles, moved northbound paralleling the I-110 Freeway towards downtown Los Angeles, and tore the roof off of the Los Angeles Convention Center, causing $50 million in damage, and actually causing the deaths of nine people. It was part of a very stormy winter of 1982-83.

From what I also understand, the funnel cloud was not detected by radar because all of our Doppler radar sites are situated on high mountain tops, and not on the flatlands, as is the case (by necessity) in the Midwest; and so the workers at that industrial park had mere seconds to seek shelter as the funnel began tearing off the roofs of those buildings and sending all this debris into the air. And as I said, had that twister touched down just a few hundred yards away in a residential area, even this EF-1 would have destroyed many homes and probably killed a lot of people.