BBC article - full text

A tornado warning has been issued for the first time ever in San Francisco, as thunderstorms swept through the region, toppling trees and causing major power cuts. The advisory was issued just before 06:00 local time (14:00 GMT) on Saturday for northern San Mateo County and parts of downtown San Francisco. The storm caused power outages for more than 221,000 people across Northern and Central California, according to the PowerOutage website.

The city last saw a tornado in 2005, though that struck without any clear radar signature, so no warning was issued in that case, National Weather Service (NWS) meteorologist Roger Glass told AP news agency. More than one million residents were woken on Saturday morning in San Francisco and its suburbs to alerts on their mobile phones, warning them to "take shelter now". Winds of up to 60mph (96km/h) ripped through the area, the NWS said.

But a few minutes later, NWS Bay Area said the warning was over and the storm had moved out of the city's downtown. Authorities were assessing the damage to determine if a twister had occurred. Nearby San Mateo County was last issued a tornado warning in 2011. NWS Bay Area warned that residents should still steer clear of the seaside over the weekend, with a coastal flood advisory in place until Monday.

San Francisco's tornado alert came just a week after the city saw its first ever tsunami warning The brief advisory was issued for northern California and southern Oregon following a magnitude 7.0 earthquake that hit off the northern coast of the state. It was later rescinded, and no injuries were reported.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c5yv8z7jx70o

  • Yukiko [she/her]
    ·
    7 days ago

    What the fuck? Standard conditions in San Fran just aren’t conducive to such phenomena. How in the hells?!

    • peeonyou [he/him]
      ·
      7 days ago

      today's weather was all sorts of fucked up

      we were without power for a good 6 hours too which kinda sucked and but also kinda okay since we put together this clock made out of 3d puzzle parts that was sitting in our closet from about 4 years ago

  • Belly_Beanis [he/him]
    ·
    7 days ago

    The Day After Tomorrow was not supposed to be a realistic depiction of climate change....

  • peeonyou [he/him]
    ·
    7 days ago

    Is it just folklore that weird weather like this can portend a huge earthquake? someone told me this today and it sounds like an old tale but also i'm terrified of earthquakes

    • sp3ctr4l@lemmy.zip
      ·
      7 days ago

      Who was it that said roughly the following?

      Climate change will first be something you see as more and more disasters in the news, then some of the influencers you follow will post it happening to them, then some of your own personal friends and family will post similar videos, then it will be you posting a video as it happens to you?

      • ratboy [they/them]
        ·
        7 days ago

        I do not know who said it, but yeah it's been like that. I've lived in various parts of the west coast so I've been seeing floods, massive waves destroying the coasts, forest fires...Pretty much every year with my own eyeballs or through my friends and family.

        Multiple years in a row I've been either in a level 3 evacuation zone or just a couple of miles outside of one. Ash covered cars, blood red sun. Got so sick from smoke exposure I had to stay in bed for a couple days.

        I love capitalism big-cool

    • Des [she/her, they/them]
      ·
      7 days ago

      holy shit. saw some pics on r/tornado earlier that looked like just some scary clouds but hadn't seen this footage yet!

      this is a legit little stovepipe with visible debris. truly some interesting times

      • ratboy [they/them]
        ·
        7 days ago

        Yeah, a lot of the videos just seem to make it look like a bad storm but it was legit. Do you know if there had been predictions of tornados in the area for the past few days or anything?

    • peeonyou [he/him]
      ·
      7 days ago

      but did the tornado take milley road to get to the 101 or did it hold off until merrick ave?

      • T34_69 [none/use name]
        ·
        5 days ago

        probably stopped at coffee cat for a little pick-me-up on the way to flippin more cars

  • sp3ctr4l@lemmy.zip
    ·
    7 days ago

    Meanwhile Malibu is burning down.

    https://abc7.com/live-updates/malibu-fire-wildfire-los-angeles-area-pepperdine-university-spreads-amid-strong-santa-ana-winds-red-flag-warning/15634926/

    LA has had basically at least 3 wildfires burning within about 50 or 60 miles from the city center, continuously, for at least 3, if not newrly 6 months now.

    Probably won't burn all of LA to the ground, but thats a long time to be breathing all that smoke, on top of LA's normal smog.

  • FlakesBongler [they/them]
    ·
    7 days ago

    It would be funny if some tech-bro was like We can stop this with lasers/robots/robot lasers and then they died

    • sp3ctr4l@lemmy.zip
      ·
      7 days ago

      Send the waymo cars to be tornado chasers, to release the probe things from Twister into them.

      There, thats an actual, stupidly niche case where an AI car probably makes more sense than having a human driver.

      Won't stop the tornado, obv.

    • crime [she/her, any]
      ·
      7 days ago

      More like "I asked ChatGPT to predict exactly where it will touch down and it says i'm going to be safe so-true" and then getting pasted