This weekend brought some dramatic weather to the Bay Area including a rare tornado in Scotts Valley, the first-ever tornado warning in San Francisco, and an atmospheric river that resulted in tens of thousands of Californians without power.
Lighter rainfall is now expected to roll in on Monday morning and a Coastal Flood Advisory remains in place through 1 pm. The National Weather Service is forecasting sunnier weather from Tuesday through Thursday with temps in the low 60s in San Francisco.
Then, they’re anticipating more heavy rain on Friday through the weekend. Saturday is likely to be the wettest day with a 70% chance of rainfall in SF.
Many Californians are coming out of a rough weekend after the winter storm knocked out power to over 170,000 PG&E customers. In San Francisco, many of the outages happened around Golden Gate Park and Bernal Heights.
This weekend’s atmospheric river brought on some of the most surprising weather that the Bay Area has seen in a while. San Francisco experienced its first-ever tornado warning in the form of an alert from the NWS at 5:52 am on Saturday. The alert was lifted at 6:15 am, but the high winds left downed trees, window damage, and more destruction in their path.
While no tornado ultimately touched down in SF on Saturday morning, another local town did indeed experience one that day. At 1:39pm, a tornado beared down on Scotts Valley in Santa Cruz County, flipping cars and causing five people minor to moderate injuries.
The NWS classified the Scotts Valley tornado as a weak EF-1 tornado, with winds reaching 90 mph. The tornado was about 30 yards wide, lasted 5 minutes, and mostly traveled along Mount Hermon Road near the Target store.
Tornados in California are uncommon on the coast, but not unheard of. The state experiences an average of 11 tornados per year, usually in the northern part of the Central Valley.