On the day of March 22nd, 2023, a tornado hit Montebello California on Wednesday morning. The city Montebello is less than 10 miles southeast of Los Angeles. This tragedy occurred at an industrial park and warehouse district around 11:14 am which lasted for about three minutes. The tornado path was about 0.42 miles long and 50 yards wide. The national weather service claimed that this tornado that hit the Los Angeles area is the strongest to hit since March 1983. This tragedy injured one person and damaged approximately 17 buildings. The city of Montebello shut down some of the streets due to the “weather related incident”. Several cars and buildings were damaged due to this incident as well a 1 foot- diameter tree was uprooted completely. 11 of the buildings were red tagged and 6 more buildings sustained damage. Red tagged means that the buildings were too dangerous to inhabit or approach at that moment. There tends to be a tornado every year in any of the Los Angeles, Ventura, Santa Barbara, and San Luis Obispo counties. The average number of tornadoes are seven to ten per year across the state. However, a lady who witnessed this tragedy explained that the tornado was very frightening.
Then she explained that she was looking outside to see the rain then she noticed a “little tornado starting to build” she then stated, “it started getting so big and it started getting so gray, and you could see everything in the air.” She also witnessed others running to find shelter to take cover by any nearby buildings. Vargas explained that when the tornado is happening you don’t know what to do because something like that has never happened around Montebello before. This situation is very interesting because never in a million years would I personally think there would be a tornado anytime in California.
Image Courtesy of Pxfuel