California is buckling up for heavy rainstorms on Monday that forecasters said might generate tornadoes, —a relatively rare phenomenon for a state that has experienced other forms of extreme weather in recent times.
Majority of California face flood risks, but experts have remarked that the state was unlikely to experience destruction like the one produced by an atmospheric river a fortnight ago.
That phenomenon deposited up to a year’s worth of precipitation in some areas, knocked out power to almost 1 million customers and killed nine people.
The Sacramento Valley and the agricultural corridor that includes the cities of Stockton and Modesto might experience tornadoes on Monday, forecasters have said.
California averages 11 tornadoes a year, but they are usually brief and weak compared with the frightening twisters that devastate towns in the Midwest or Southeast, said Kate Forrest, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Sacramento.
Daniel Swain, a meteorologist with the University of California, Los Angeles had said that the chance of a tornado in any single 25-mile radius of the danger zone varied from 2% to 5%, although the cumulative likelihood was higher.
The U.S. National Weather Service’s Storm Prediction Center has yet to issue a tornado watch but they said conditions offered the possibility a twister at the low end of the Enhanced Fujita Scale, like an EF-0 with winds from 65 to 85 mph (105 to 137 kph) or an EF-1 from 86 to 110 mph.
