After going more than two decades without seeing a tornado touch ground in San Luis Obispo County, this week, two tornadoes hit the Central Coast on the same day.
On Friday, KSBY spoke with National Weather Service officials again who filled us in on how it happened.
“It is something we generally see with these smaller tornadoes. You will see a lot of debris flying, and all of a sudden, you can have gusty, increased winds,” said meteorologist Lisa Phillips.
Phillips says in the midwest, tornadoes are more frequent due to dry air coming down from the mountains, mixed with moist air moving in from the South that creates rotation in the atmosphere.
“That is what we had a couple days ago with this storm,” she explained. “In this case, we didn’t have actual thunderstorms, but we did have very strong showers that created strong updrafts. Those two interact with each other to create a tornado.”
“It is pretty crazy to think that we had a tornado here on the Central Coast,” said Jennifer Shepard, who lives in Arroyo Grande.
Shepard says Wednesday afternoon, she had friends and family reach out to ask if she was okay after the tornado passed through.
She says she could hardly believe that a tornado spiraled through the region. KSBY meteorologist Vivian Rennie adds that the occurrence was a rare one.
“Storms that can cause tornadoes are really rare here on the Central Coast, really rare across the state of California. Typically, they form on what is called a dryline. It is basically a cold front, but instead of cold air, it is between very dry, and very, very moist air,” Rennie detailed.
Rennie says the EF-1 tornadoes that hit both Grover Beach and Los Osos Wednesday were stronger than the last tornado that came down in Oceano 20 years ago.
While Phillips says the probability of them happening in our local communities is slim, she wants people to know what to do in the event of another tornado warning near their home.
“Get away from those windows and hang out there until the storm has passed. That is the best way to stay safe,” she advised.
Phillips says she and her team are still studying Wednesday’s tornadoes and will release more information soon.
Ariel Cohen, the National Weather Service Oxnard’s meteorologist in charge, tells KSBY the last tornado that touched ground in Santa Barbara County was an EF-0 tornado that hit a mobile home park in Carpinteria last March.
