A twister touched down within the Northern California city of Scotts Valley close to Santa Cruz Saturday afternoon, flipping automobiles and flattening energy traces, in accordance with authorities. Several individuals had been harm, fireplace officers mentioned.
The incident occurred at round 1:40 p.m. across the 200 block of Mount Hermon Drive. Scotts Valley police initially posted an alert on social media advising residents to keep away from the realm following a multi-vehicle accident that had a number of energy traces down and utterly blocked the highway in all instructions.
Scotts Valley Police Department
Police later posted an replace saying that witnesses reported it was not an accident “however slightly a doable twister” that touched down close to the Target retailer at 270 Mount Hermon Drive “and threw a number of automobiles off the highway.”
The Scotts Valley Fire Protection District informed CBS News that 4 to 5 individuals had been harm within the climate occasion, sustaining minor to reasonable accidents. At least two of these individuals had been transported to hospitals.
Around 20 automobiles had been believed to have been broken, the fireplace district mentioned.
Scotts Valley is a small city about six miles north of Santa Cruz in Santa Cruz County and a brief distance off of State Highway 17.
The National Weather Service had issued an extreme thunderstorm warning within the space a short while earlier than the twister.
A later put up on X by the Bay Area workplace of the National Weather Service confirmed {that a} twister had occurred based mostly on “video, images, firsthand accounts, and radar signatures.”
The put up famous {that a} NWS Survey group will additional examine the incident to offer a rating.
The twister was simply the newest excessive wind occasion related to the highly effective storm that handed by way of Northern California in a single day. The first-ever tornado warning in San Francisco was issued by the National Weather Service early Saturday morning shortly earlier than 6 a.m., alarming residents with a cellular phone alert that woke many individuals up, in accordance with studies on social media.
While that twister didn’t materialize, excessive winds had been inflicting impacts throughout the area, together with a city-wide power outage in the North Bay city of Novato and a full closure of Interstate 580 in each instructions on the San Joaquin and Alameda county line after a multiple-vehicle collision involving an enormous rig as a result of excessive winds.
