Monday's California Tornadoes Actually Not All That Odd

A picturesque tornado in California on Monday. This
one stayed out in open fields and caused no damage.

A couple tornadoes touched down Monday afternoon in a flat area of north-central California. 

The fact that California had tornadoes might seem odd, as it's not exactly Tornado Alley. However, the Golden State actually gets at least one or two or more pretty much every year.  That contradicts the headlines on the news reports on this event, but so be it. 

And if there's a tornado season in California, it's this time of year. 

The two tornadoes on Monday weren't epic. One of them damaged a barn and took down a couple power lines. Another one was out in open fields and didn't hit anything. But that second one was quite picturesque, as tornadoes go, and would have been a winning specimen for a tornado chaser in say, Oklahoma.  

Monday's twisters were in a large are of central California covered by the National Weather Service office in Sacramento.  There were 39 tornadoes in this area in the decade ending this past December 31, which works out to an average of almost four per year. 

So, other than the fact one of Monday's  tornadoes was awfully photogenic, this wasn't the most unusual thing to happen in California lately.  But I'm sure these twisters were the talk of the towns near where they spun up. 

January through March in particular is the time of year when powerful storm fronts plow into California from the Pacific Ocean. These fronts are often parts of storm systems that have plenty of cold air aloft. This helps create instability, the kind that can grow towering clouds that turn into thunderstorms. 

Sometimes, these storm fronts have strong winds aloft that change directions with height.  There's your recipe for tornadoes. 

California tornadoes tend to be on the weak side. 

One of the strongest tornadoes on record in the state was an exceedingly rare fire tornado Redding, California back in 2018. This was not just a fire whirl. The parent wildfire was so strong it created basically a supercell thunderstorm with the fire.  The tornado touched down in the wildfire as a terrifying cyclone of fire and smoke reaching speeds of 143 mph - an EF-3 tornado.