New Delhi: At least five people were killed and several others were injured after two tornadoes tore through California on Wednesday, news agency AFP reported.
In southeast Los Angeles in Montebello, videos of a tornado ripping off parts of roofs and throwing cars around, have gone viral on the social media.
“I was driving… and I saw this tornado in front of me and had to reverse out,” AFP quoted a local as saying. “The tornado took off the roof of the building. All the windows of the cars are shattered. Cars were destroyed, it was just a mess,” he added.
“I saw cars just swivelling through the streets and it was just the craziest thing I’ve ever seen,” he further said.
Tornado hits south maple ave in Montebello tearing the roof off multiple buildings and destroying multiple cars pic.twitter.com/yJrbuPMccj
— SaveArtsakh (@njtehcherchian) March 22, 2023
It started with a lone thunderstorm around 11am local time and the tornado had windspeeds of up to 110 mph, making it the strongest tornado to have hit Los Angeles since March 1983, as per the National Weather Service (NWS).
According to NWS, 17 structures were damaged as the tornado hit an industrial warehouse-commercial business district.
The NWS said it was investigating the event, that it called “a weak tornado”.
The first tornado “briefly touched down” on Tuesday in the Sandpiper Village mobile home park in Carpinteria, about 11 miles east of Santa Barbara, the NWS said. It had an estimated peak wind speed of 75 miles per hour and damaged 25 mobile homes. The second tornado occurred around 11:20 a.m. on Wednesday in Montebello, a suburb of Los Angeles.
“A weak, narrow tornado briefly touched down in the Sandpiper Village mobile home park in Carpinteria on the evening of Tuesday, March 21. It damaged around 25 mobile home units and there was minor tree damage to the cemetery adjacent to the mobile home park,” a statement issued by NWS said.
Notably, aerial images in the aftermath showed holes in several roofs, pipes and installations twisted and broken and cars seemingly pushed out of the parking bays.
Roads in Northern California had to be temporarily closed due to flooding. By Wednesday afternoon, close to 90,000 customers state-wide were without power, majorly in San Francisco Bay Area, and millions of residents were under flood watches.
