Rainstorm Triggers an Apparent Tornado and Fatal 10-Vehicle Crash

The storm that swept through the Southland on Friday didn’t drop a lot of rain, but it did cause some serious problems, including an apparent tornado that damaged buildings in Long Beach and slick pavement that contributed to a lethal 10-vehicle crash in Santa Clarita.

The cyclonic winds in Long Beach tore a 60-by-60-foot chunk from the roof of a Lucky supermarket at Spring Street and Palo Verde Avenue on the east side of town and ripped a 100-foot-long strip of roofing from the library at nearby Cubberley Elementary School.

Several structures across from the market, including a Great Western bank branch and a McDonald’s restaurant, sustained structural damage when the brief but powerful winds struck about 2:10 p.m.

“It was very incredible,” said nearby resident John Foster, who said the winds “tore plastic right off of my addition I was building. . . . There were trees up inside of it. It wasn’t going to stop.”

Some power poles and trees toppled, battering homes, automobiles and fences and shattering a number of windows. Fire officials said electrical lines were downed in several Long Beach residential neighborhoods.

Despite the widespread damage, there was only one report of minor injury.

A tornado watch, issued by the National Weather Service about 2:30 p.m., was canceled about 45 minutes later.

Gary Ryan, a Weather Service meteorologist, said that a witness reported the possible tornado shortly after 2 p.m. and that, within minutes, damage reports began pouring in to fire officials in Long Beach.

Whether the winds actually were from a tornado had yet to be verified, Ryan said. However, he said the witness described a spinning funnel cloud reaching from the base of the clouds to the ground, and that, in meteorological terms, constitutes a tornado.

Tornadoes scatter debris in characteristically circular patterns, Ryan said. He added that a study of the damage in Long Beach should determine in the next several days whether a tornado struck.

While tornadoes in the Southland seem to have been increasing in recent years, that is probably because of better reporting and more thorough investigation, Ryan said.

He added that twisters in the Los Angeles Basin really aren’t that uncommon, but that most are “baby tornadoes” compared to their much bigger, more powerful brethren in the Midwest. He said that while the Midwestern cyclones frequently are deadly, no one is known to have been killed by one in the Southland.

“The tornadoes here come from thunderclouds up to 20,000 feet tall,” he said. “The ones there come from clouds up to 60,000 feet tall.”

Wes Etheredge, a meteorologist with Wichita, Kan.-based WeatherData Inc., said Midwestern thunderstorms often are much stronger because of their origins.

Thunderstorms here generally are born over the Pacific, usually without any major interaction with other weather systems. Etheredge said Midwestern thunderstorms often are the product of violent collisions between cool, dry air from the northern Plains and warm, moist air from the Gulf of Mexico.

*

Friday’s storm unleashed most of its force here during the afternoon, with rain-slick pavement a factor in dozens of traffic accidents.

Shortly after 1 p.m., 10 cars and trucks slammed together during showers on the Antelope Valley Freeway near San Fernando Road, killing one person and seriously injuring five others.

The rainy weather prevented the use of an air ambulance to transport the victims to hospitals, county Fire Capt. Steve Valenzuela said.

By nightfall Friday, the storm had dropped just over half an inch of rain on the Civic Center, raising the total for the season--which began July 1--to 6.24 inches, slightly more than the normal total for the date of 5.66 inches.

Other storm totals at nightfall Friday included 1.01 inches in Westwood, 0.88 of an inch in Long Beach, 0.71 in Pasadena, 0.57 in Norwalk and 0.41 in Northridge.

Etheredge said that Friday’s storm arrived a little earlier than expected and that it should depart the same way. Skies are expected to clear by this afternoon, with only a few clouds hanging around Sunday. Overcast conditions are expected to increase Monday, with a new storm bringing more rain Tuesday.

*

Associated Press contributed to this story.