People on the central coast prepare for fires, floods and earthquakes. Tornadoes are a different story, but National Weather Service Meteorologist Rick Canepa says the Scotts Valley tornado last weekend was not the first recorded in Santa Cruz County.
“Back in the historic database from 1950 to 2023, there have been at least seven reports of tornadoes,” he said.
The tornado on Saturday had estimated winds of 90 mph and touched down for about five minutes on Mt. Hermon Road. It flipped cars, stripped trees and bent telephone poles. Three people went to the hospital for non-life-threatening injuries. Crews restored power and re-opened the road by the next morning.
Canepa says this storm was particularly strong several thousand feet in the atmosphere, which contributed to the formation of the tornado.
“When a low pressure system moves through with a lot of energy and a lot of cold air aloft, it'll cause showers and thunderstorms to form,” he said. “And if there is just enough difference in motion horizontally in the atmosphere, these can spin up into a tornado.”
The National Weather Service says California gets an average of 11 tornadoes a year. Most of those are in the northern part of the Central Valley.
“They're a little less common on the Central Coast and in the Bay Area because of the varied terrain versus the valley floor,” Canepa said.
