Yes, that was a tornado in Los Angeles on Christmas

LOS ANGELES — A tornado did, in fact, spin through Los Angeles on Christmas, the National Weather Service confirmed, damaging a home and a commercial strip mall.

With a wind speed of up to 80 mph, the brief tornado traveled for about a third of a mile in Boyle Heights just after 10 a.m. Thursday. It was classified as an EF-0 on the Enhanced Fujita scale, the weakest kind of tornado, in which three-second gusts can be 65 to 85 mph.

The tornado first hit a home on Lee Street, damaging the roof and allowing rainwater to leak inside. It then hit a strip mall on the northeast corner of Whittier Boulevard and South Lorena Street, breaking some windows and tree branches, bending a utility pole and destroying several business signs, the weather service said in a statement Friday evening.

Just north of the shopping plaza off of Lorena Street, damage could be seen on the roofs of some homes and metal chain link fences. Residents described how “the storm roared and the house was shaking” when the twister spun through.

The tornado ended at 10:12 a.m. on Thursday. Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass toured the damaged neighborhood on Friday and spoke to residents there.

“The safety of every Angeleno is my top priority,” she said in a statement, citing the tornado and “consecutive days of wet weather.”

The confirmation that a tornado, albeit a small one, had struck Los Angeles was the latest illustration of the power of the Christmas Eve-Christmas Day Pineapple Express storm, which brought record amounts of rain to a wide swath of Southern California for the two-day holiday period.

On Friday night, a large boulder fell from a mountainside and rolled onto Highway 18 west of Big Bear Lake; two cars were then involved in a vehicle collision. Five people were reported injured, including two children; all injuries were minor, but four people were sent to a nearby hospital, the San Bernardino County Fire Department said.

At Mammoth Mountain, two ski patrollers suffered significant injuries Friday morning when a slide hit as they performed “avalanche mitigation work.” One patroller sustained serious injuries and was transported out of the area for further care; the second patroller may have suffered broken bones.

Mammoth Mountain was to remain closed Saturday. On its Facebook page, the ski resort said the closure was “to allow mountain operations and patrol teams time to mitigate storm-related hazards across the entire mountain.”

Authorities on Friday reported another possible storm-related death — the fourth reported in California in recent days.

A deceased man was found in a partially submerged vehicle Friday morning in the Lancaster area, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department said.

Earlier storm-related deaths involved a motorist who drove into floodwaters in Redding; a woman who was knocked off a rock by a large wave at a beach in Mendocino County; and a man struck by a falling tree in San Diego.

Some of the worst damage hit the San Gabriel Mountains, where a debris flow — a fast-moving flow of mud and rocks — rammed into homes and left cars buried in debris in Wrightwood, a town that sits on the border of L.A. and San Bernardino counties. In the mountainous community of Lytle Creek in San Bernardino County, a bridge connecting parts of the town was seen during the storm covered with water and was possibly destroyed.

Gov. Gavin Newsom has declared emergencies in Los Angeles, San Diego, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino and Shasta counties.

The fact that tornadoes can occur in California may come as a surprise, but they do happen. They’re nowhere near the scale of what can happen in the Midwest — where they can be a mile or two wide and can last for hours — but they’re not unheard of California.

At least three tornadoes occurred in California during the last rainy season. A tornado lasting for about five minutes touched down a year ago in the city of Scotts Valley in Santa Cruz County, injuring three people. With wind speeds that peaked at 90 mph, that tornado overturned vehicles, damaged street signs, downed trees and power poles, and stripped trees of branches.

In February, a tornado with winds of up to 85 mph tore roofs off mobile homes in Oxnard and ripped power cables to the ground. A tornado in March uprooted trees in Pico Rivera, with wind gusts of up to 85 mph sending some crashing into vehicles and homes.

In 2023, a tornado that hit Montebello was the strongest to hit L.A. County in 40 years, bringing winds of 110 mph. It left 17 buildings damaged and 11 structures red-tagged, and was 50 yards wide. One person was injured. That tornado was classified as an EF-1 on the Enhanced Fujita Scale.

The previous time a tornado with a strength of EF-1 or greater hit L.A. County was back in 1983, when an even-stronger EF-2 tornado tore through a residential area of South Los Angeles. That tornado injured 25, mostly from flying glass, and destroyed 37 homes and severely damaged more than 100 others.

Between 1950 to 2024, there have been 478 recorded tornadoes in California, with the highest number in Los Angeles County, which had 49, followed by San Bernardino County, which had 33, and Orange County and Fresno County, which each had 31, according to data from the National Centers for Environmental Information analyzed by meteorologist Jan Null. San Diego and Riverside counties each had 27 tornadoes.

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(Times staff writers Jack Dolan and Noah Goldberg contributed to this report.)