In fact, a tornado passed through Los Angeles on Christmas Day, the National Weather Service confirmed, damaging a home and a shopping mall.
With wind speeds of up to 80 mph, the brief tornado moved about a third of a mile in Boyle Heights just after 10 a.m. Thursday. It was classified as an EF-0 on the Enhanced Fujita scale, the weakest type of tornado, where the three-second burst can be 65 to 85 mph.
The tornado first hit a home on Lee Street, damaging the roof and allowing rainwater to leak inside. It then struck a shopping center at the northeast corner of Whittier Boulevard and South Lorena Street, breaking windows and tree branches, bending a utility pole and destroying business signs, the weather service said in a statement Friday evening.
Just north of the shops off Lorena Street, damage can be seen on the roofs of some houses and the iron link fence. Residents described how “the storm roared and the house shook” when the twister came through.
The tornado ended at 10:12 a.m. Thursday. The Mayor of Los Angeles, Karen Bass, visited the damaged area on Friday and spoke to its residents.
“The safety of every Angeleno is my top priority,” he said in a statement, citing the storm and “consecutive days of wet weather.”
The confirmation that a tornado, albeit a minor one, touched down in Los Angeles was the latest example of the power of the Christmas Eve storm, Pineapple Express, which brought large amounts of rain to a wide area of Southern California during the two-day holiday.
A flooded intersection at Hill and G streets in Oxnard on Wednesday.
(Myung J. Chun/Los Angeles Times)
Friday night, a large rock fell from the mountain and rolled down Highway 18 west of Big Bear Lake; two vehicles were then involved in a car accident. It is reported that five people were injured, including two children; all injuries were minor, but four people were sent to a nearby hospital, the San Bernardino County Fire Department said.
At Mammoth Mountain, two skiers were seriously injured Friday morning when they were hit by a slide while doing “avalanche mitigation work.” One security guard sustained serious injuries and was taken off-site for treatment; the second guard may have broken bones.
Mammoth Mountain would remain closed on Saturday. On its Facebook page, the ski resort said the closure “will allow mountain operations and maintenance teams time to reduce storm-related hazards throughout the mountain.”
Authorities on Friday reported another possible storm-related death — the fourth reported in California in recent days.
A man was found dead in a partially submerged vehicle Friday morning in the Lancaster area, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department said.
Previous storm-related deaths involved a motorist caught in flash floods in Redding; a woman who was knocked off a rock by a tidal wave in Mendocino County; and a man was hit by a falling tree in San Diego.
In Encinitas, a large tree fell on Wednesday. A separate fatal tree fall occurred Wednesday in San Diego.
(Hayne Palmour IV / TNS)
Some of the worst damage hit the San Gabriel Mountains, where debris flows — fast-moving mud and rock flows — swept into homes and left cars buried in debris in Wrightwood, a town on the border of LA and San Bernardino counties. In the mountainous community of Lytle Creek in San Bernardino County, a bridge connecting parts of the city was seen during the storm covered in water and possibly destroyed.
Gov. Gavin Newsom declared states of emergency in Los Angeles, San Diego, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino and Shasta counties.
The fact that hurricanes can happen in California may be surprising, but they do happen. They are nowhere near the scale of what happens in the Midwest – where they can be a mile or two wide and can last for hours – but they are known in California.
Misty Cheng looks at the flood damage at her home in Wrightwood on Thursday.
(Eric Thayer/Los Angeles Times)
There were at least three hurricanes that occurred in California during the last rainy season. A tornado that lasted about five minutes struck last year in the town of Scotts Valley in Santa Cruz County, injuring three people. With wind speeds of up to 90 mph, the tornado overturned cars, damaged road signs, downed trees and power poles, and stripped trees of branches.
In February, a tornado with winds of up to 85 mph tore through the roofs of mobile homes in Oxnard and tore down power lines. A tornado in March uprooted trees in Pico Rivera, with wind gusts of up to 85 mph sending debris into cars and homes.
In 2023, the tornado that hit Montebello was the strongest to hit LA County in 40 years, bringing winds of 110 mph. It left 17 buildings damaged and 11 buildings red-marked, and is 50 yards wide. One person was injured. That hurricane was classified as an EF-1 on the Enhanced Fujita Scale.
The last time an EF-1 tornado or major hurricane hit LA County was back in 1983, when an EF-2 tornado tore through a residential area in South Los Angeles. That tornado injured 25, mostly from flying glass, destroyed 37 homes and seriously injured over 100 others.
Times staff writers Jack Dolan and Noah Goldberg contributed to this report.
