United States: Los Angeles hit by a powerful tornado, not seen since 1983

The tornado that hit Los Angeles on March 22 injured two people. Getty Images via AFP - MARIO TAMA

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On Wednesday afternoon, March 22, a tornado hit Los Angeles and injured two people. A roof and a tree were torn off. This phenomenon usually hits the central United States, but it is the latest illustration of bad weather that lasts in California and where the winter has been extraordinarily rainy, as well as the beginning of spring.

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The passage of the tornado lasted no more than three minutes, the time to damage seventeen buildings of Montebello, just east of Los Angeles, at the end of a particularly violent winter in this state of the American West. It is a mass of swirling winds that has traveled through this city of more than 60,000 inhabitants.

The phenomenon is not new - it occurs once or twice a year - but it was necessary to go back to 1983 to find such a powerful tornado, reports our correspondent in Los Angeles, Loïc Pialat. And we must go back even further, 1893, for a day as rainy as Tuesday in the city center of the City of Angels.

Extreme weather events increasingly frequent

California this week experienced its twelfth atmospheric river since December, a current of moist air from the Pacific that turns into precipitation as it arrives on land. Around San Francisco, this river was accompanied by strong winds. Falling trees killed three people. Further south, heavy rains have not helped a rural area already affected by flooding during the winter.

While it is difficult to establish a direct link between these storms and climate change, scientists regularly explain that warming increases the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events.

If California is no longer in a situation of exceptional drought, the melting of the snow accumulated in the Sierra Nevada could soon cause new floods.

A rare tornado touched down in the Los Angeles suburb of Montebello, Calif. Wednesday, ripping roofs off buildings and sending debris into the sky. https://t.co/xGvsAsSovm pic.twitter.com/iJWWcDWUVl

— The Associated Press (@AP) March 23, 2023

(

and with AFP)

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• United States
• Climate
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• Climate change