April showers bring May flowers, but what about March? Recently a rare tornado occurred  in a small town just outside of downtown Los Angeles. Blowing roofs off of houses, causing signs to fly in the air, and the shattering of windows, the tornado caused severe damage to the city of Montebello. 

The tornado touched down on Montebello around 11:14 a.m. on a typical Wednesday. The tornado was present for around two to three minutes causing severe damage to the community. With winds reaching up to 110 miles per hour, the recent tornado was one of the most severe tornadoes to hit Los Angeles since 1983 as stated by BBC News.

Seventeen buildings were damaged by the tornado. Out of the seventeen, eleven of the buildings were deemed uninhabitable after the severe disfigurement as mentioned in a segment with NBC Los Angeles. Leaving the city in ruins, an observer described the scene as a huge cloud of debrief, filled with scattered nails, trash, and pieces of unhinged roofs. In a interview with NBC Los Angeles, Lucas Seehof observed, “I’m staring at it and I realize, these are 4-foot-by-8-foot sheets of roofing, plywood, big pieces of timber flying in the air…these aren’t little palm fronds or leaves, this is parts of structures flying in the air.”

However, this was not the only extreme weather event that took place on Wednesday. Just north of Los Angeles, Santa Barbara County also experienced a tornado with winds of 75 miles per hour., causing damage to a cemetery along with a nearby tree. 

This recent weather not only affected the residents of San Francisco and Los Angeles but also Yorba Linda. Students of Yorba Linda High school recently have felt more tired and odd. “The recent weather is very strange as it fluctuates quite often. It affects all of us, even people miles away. I feel more tired often due to the weather and it has thrown off my schedule,” states Journey Mou (9).

So what is the cause of these unexpected events? To clarify, these recent tornadoes are due to water spouts that form in the ocean right off of the pacific. Although it is a rare sighting, these can occur in Costa Mesa, San Diego, Los Angeles, or even Yorba Linda. According to the AP biology teacher Mr. Walls, a tornado can be recorded every five years all over California, depending on the waterspout location. A tornadic waterspout is known as tornadoes that form over water and move from water to land. This is formed in low, heavy, dense vertical towering clouds which are created when warm air moves upward at a cold front. These can typically be seen when severe thunderstorms, hail, high winds, and dangerous lightning are present as mentioned by NSSL (NOAA National Severe Storms Laboratory).

But tornadoes are not the only random weather event that happened this week. In California, a bomb cyclone hovered over the city of San Francisco. A bomb cyclone is due to a sudden drop in atmospheric pressure, causing a storm to become very powerful in a short amount of time according to the AP Biology teacher Mr. Walls. As you scan the streets of San Francisco, debris, fallen branches, and damaged homes are everywhere. All around the bay area, people were no force against nature, as people were clinging on to poles and struggling to walk against the catastrophic winds. It was so extreme that waves flooded over the pier and buildings shook and swayed. “The windows on the 28th floor of the building where we work were literally shaking, and when we were looking outside the window, we could see waves crashing on the pier, it looked crazy, it looked apocalyptic,” said Andre Spinoglio in an interview with eyewitness news. The after effects of the cyclone included the death of two people, four people injured, and the capsizing of a boat. In addition, Stanford canceled their Tuesday finals. 

Both recent weather events can be connected to the recent atmospheric rivers which are long currents of wet air that rush across the ocean. They can be capable of releasing large amounts of rain or snow. Recently California has undergone, by the recent rain pour, unexpected snow and harsh winds. The reason for the recent surge of atmospheric rivers can be traced to jet streams. “Atmospheric rivers are recurrent, but we don’t get them often, it has to do with the jet stream a lot of times the jet stream is north of us, and only northern California gets it, but this year it dropped down and so that was a random effect that you don’t often encounter,” states Mr. Walls. A jet steam can be described as air that travels in the mass that moves in the atmosphere really fast similar to a jet according to Mr. Walls.