Tornado Damages Cars, 20 Homes in San Carlos

An early-morning tornado roared through a San Carlos neighborhood Tuesday, damaging about 20 homes, toppling trees into back-yard swimming pools and on top of parked cars, and littering streets with debris and broken glass.

Remarkably, no injuries were reported from the twister, which touched down about 2:30 a.m. in the 7900 block of Deerfield Street. A National Weather Service official estimated that the tornado swept across an area a mile long and a quarter of a mile wide. Early estimates put the extent of the damage at more than $200,000.

“It felt like the San Jose earthquake with lungs,” said Ron Fornaca, 28, whose house received relatively minor damage.

“Nobody saw a funnel cloud,” said weather service forecaster Wally Cegiel, noting that the tornado hit while most people were asleep. “But trees were thrown in all directions, and residents reported hearing large roars and (seeing) the trees flying in circles.”

The twister, with winds of up to 50 m.p.h., was spawned by a strong winter storm that dropped 1.49 inches of rain in Campo and increased the snow cover at Mt. Laguna to 12 inches.

Weather service forecaster Wilbur Shigehara said downtown San Diego recorded 1.1 inches of rain, and winds reaching 40 m.p.h. were recorded at Lindbergh Field early Tuesday morning.

Three new storms stacked up in the Gulf of Alaska were waiting to sweep through the area, with the first expected to hit this morning. The storms will continue a wet, cold winter pattern that should last through the end of the month, Shigehara said.

The storms queuing up off Alaska may bring more tornadoes, but San Diego “just doesn’t have the capability to put out a tornado warning,” Shigehara said. “You need a radar system to put out tornado warnings.”

In the past 10 years, San Diego County has averaged one or two twisters per year, most of them striking during cold storms between midwinter and early spring, he said. The strongest tornado in recent memory struck San Diego Bay last year, near the San Diego Yacht Club, where it picked up a 35-foot yacht and sent it crashing into a dock.

In San Carlos, residents spent Tuesday cleaning up after the tornado and examining the damage it left. Roofs on several houses were torn, and back-yard fences were blown down.

Ryan Grant’s 3-month-old compact car was destroyed when a large palm tree snapped at the base and landed lengthwise down the middle of the car. The car had been parked in front of the house on Deerfield Street, but was discovered about 40 feet down the block, flattened.

“When my mom said my car wasn’t there, I freaked out,” said the 18-year-old senior at Patrick Henry High School.

Roy Parson’s pickup truck suffered a similar fate. A 40-foot pine tree was twisted off at the base and landed on top of the truck. But that wasn’t the worst of it for Parson and his wife, Mary.

“At daybreak we saw that the damage was all around. . . . It is scary,” he said.

The Parsons woke up to find uprooted trees lying at the bottom of their swimming pool. The couple also lost two sets of patio furniture. Roy Parson recovered two chairs from the back yard of a neighbor who lives three houses away. A broken glass top from one of the patio tables was atop his next-door neighbor’s roof.

Another car on Deerfield Street was buried beneath the bare branches of a large tree that snapped mid-trunk.

Reeni Grant, Ryan’s mother, said she didn’t hear a thing before the tornado hit, but “then it was like a freight train coming through my house.”

Her back yard was littered with debris, mostly tree branches, and several windows in the house were broken and the roof peeled back in spots. A full-size refrigerator that had been plugged into an outlet on the patio was tossed into a neighbor’s back yard. There was no sign of the spaghetti that had been stored inside.

“This is just a general mess. I get depressed just looking at it,” Grant said.

San Diego Gas & Electric Co. spokeswoman Elizabeth Pecsi said about 78,000 customers in the county had their service interrupted at some time during the storm, but that power had been restored to all as of Tuesday night.

In Escondido, water-soaked ground gave way and a mudslide temporarily closed Del Dios Highway. Rain also washed away portions of Dehesa Road in East County near Japatul Road, which was closed Monday evening, California Highway Patrol spokesman Robert Polzin said. The CHP also warned of high winds on Interstate 5 north of Oceanside. Chains were required on Sunrise Highway east of Pine Valley.

Students in some mountain communities got the day off after at least three school districts decided to cancel classes for the day.

“There was just a lot of snow, and ice down on the roads,” said Julian Union High School District Supt. Chet Francisco. “We don’t transport students under those conditions.”

The pelting rain and strong winds also destroyed a sailboat that ran aground off Point Loma on Monday night.

Joe Daprea of Anaheim, who was returning from Mexico, was rescued from the boat, the Joe D., by San Diego lifeguards, said city lifeguard spokesman Dave Johnson. High seas partially capsized the boat, causing Daprea to lose control of the craft.

Harbor Police rounded up six boats that had broken from their moorings and were drifting in San Diego Bay, said Harbor Police spokesman Raymond Connor.

Forecaster Shigehara predicted that today’s storm would dump about half an inch of rain in San Diego and 1.5 inches of snow in the mountains. Occasionally heavy downpours should dissipate by the afternoon, only to be replenished by the next storm, which should move in tonight, about the same time spring officially begins at 7 p.m., he said.

Friday and Saturday should be cold and clear before the third storm hits, Shigehara said.

“Cold is the word right through the weekend,” he said, “and windy all through San Diego County.”

Daytime temperatures today and Thursday are expected to be between 57 and 63 degrees both on the coast and inland. Coastal lows should be 43 to 53, with inland lows of 35 to 45.

The snow level should fall to 3,500 feet today, with strong gusty south winds in mountain areas of up to 40 m.p.h. Low temperatures will be in the 20s.

Rain Monday night and Tuesday morning brought the seasonal total to 7.37 inches, just 0.23 of an inch shy of normal.