The National Weather Service has confirmed that two tornadoes touched down in San Luis Obispo County Wednesday, the first in nearly 20 years.
Meteorologists with the NWS said it had received unconfirmed reports of at least one tornado touching down near the cities of Pismo Beach and Grover Beach.
On Thursday, the agency confirmed that two tornadoes had in fact touched down on the Central Coast.
Both tornadoes registered as EF1 on the “Enhanced Fujita Scale,” which is used to assign a tornado a rating based on estimated wind speeds and related damage.
The first touched down around 3:40 p.m. outside of Los Osos, which is located about 11 miles east of San Luis Obispo and six miles south of Morro Bay.
That storm was described as a “low-topped mini-supercell” that came onshore and produced a weak tornado just east of Los Osos.
Windspeeds topped 95 mph and the tornado caused intermittent damage along its path before dissipating about five miles east along Los Osos Valley Road.
Damage included several snapped and downed power poles, and a portion of a greenhouse roof was torn off, the NWS wrote in its report.
The duration of that tornado was estimated to be about six minutes.
The second twister touched down around 4 p.m. about 20 miles southeast in Grover Beach. That tornado traveled about one mile along the town’s main thoroughfare before breaking up just outside Arroyo Grande.
With windspeeds near 95 mph, trees were toppled and uprooted, some of which fell onto cars and power lines.
Multiple businesses reported damage and the tornadic winds “buckled metal garages,” the NWS said.
That entire incident lasted less than three minutes.
These are the first confirmed tornadoes in San Luis Obispo County since Feb. 2, 2004 when a waterspout made landfall in Oceano. That registered as an F0 tornado on the since-replaced original Fujita Scale.
That small twister hit a park ranger in his truck, according to its National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration storm incident report. The ranger was uninjured and his truck sustained “no reportable damage,” the report states.
Although relatively weak as far as the EF Scale is concerned, the two tornadoes are believed to be the most powerful to touch down in San Luis Obispo County since at least 1950.