Twister Damages 4 Homes in Fontana

Cloudbursts raked Southern California on Friday, spawning a small tornado that touched down in Fontana around noon, downing power lines, uprooting trees and damaging four houses and a pump house in a residential subdivision.

The twister, which witnesses said took about five minutes to dissipate, caused about $20,000 worth of damage, but there were no reports of injuries, said San Bernardino County Fire Dept. Battalion Chief David Nunez.

“It was like a movie,” said resident Jose Farias, 20. Farias’ back fence was blown over, but his dog and roosters were unhurt.

“I’ve never seen the wind blow so hard,” said Farias, describing how the twister nearly tugged his neighbor’s roof off. “I was like, ‘Is this the end of the world?’ It was crazy. Everything was vibrating.”

There were eight reports of tornadoes in Southern California between Jan. 10 and Feb. 26, said Chris Vaccaro, a spokesman for the National Weather Service. California typically has about a dozen tornadoes -- far weaker and briefer than those in the Midwest -- in an entire year.

Brief but heavy showers swept rapidly across the Los Angeles Basin on Friday, interspersed with equally brief moments of sunshine.

The weather service said 0.6 of an inch of rain had fallen on downtown Los Angeles by 5:30 p.m., raising the total for the season, which runs from July 1 to June 30, to 34.51 inches. That is three times the normal total for the date and well on a pace to break the all-time season record of 38.18 inches, set in 1883-84.

Forecasts call for a 50% chance of showers in Los Angeles County this morning, with partly cloudy skies later today and Sunday and slightly warmer temperatures.

A high surf advisory is in effect until 10 a.m. Sunday along Orange County’s coast, and forecasters said there is a slight chance of more brief tornadoes and some funnel clouds, especially near San Diego, through tonight.

In Fontana on Friday, tree branches, wood fragments, plastic bags and shingles littered the sidewalks hours after the twister churned through the neighborhood of modest single-story stucco houses.

“It started with the wind,” said Linda Molina, 42, who was watching television when she heard two thunderclaps and the clatter of hail on the roof. She said she looked out a kitchen window and saw trash, branches and wood scraps swirling through the dark sky.

“It was like a windmill,” she said. Her roof was damaged, an electrical cable snapped, a backyard fence collapsed and a patio walkway was littered with overturned trash barrels, soda cans and glass fragments.

Across Elm Street, Ramon Soliz, 60, said he had been edging the grass along a walkway when a drizzle became a downpour.

“The wind started gathering up,” he said. “Half my neighbor’s patio disappeared.”

A shade tree in Soliz’s frontyard crashed through his chain-link fence, his chimney cover was knocked askew and a wooden gate from the backyard was flung into the middle of the street.

“Thank goodness everything’s back to normal,” Soliz said later as a patch of blue sky and sun peeked through leaden clouds. “Thank goodness for the sunshine.”