Pacific storm triggers tornado, mudslides, floods in Southern California

(Reuters) - A Pacific storm pounded Southern California with heavy rain and high winds on Friday, triggering a small tornado, flash floods and mudslides that prompted the evacuation of hundreds of homes, damaged dozens of others and disrupted passenger rail services along the coast.
One person was found dead on Friday in a rain-swollen flood-control channel in the Orange County town of Garden Grove, which could mark the third storm-related fatality on the West Coast since Thursday.
Separately, rescue teams saved two people after they were swept away in the fast-moving Los Angeles River near a homeless encampment, the Los Angeles Fire Department said in Twitter messages.

 

 

High winds tore down power lines throughout the region, leaving as many as 78,000 customers without electricity at one point after the storm moved in before dawn, utility officials reported.
In an unusual phenomenon for Southern California, a small tornado touched down in South Los Angeles, where it damaged the roofs of an apartment complex and two houses and ripped up a billboard, said National Weather Service Specialist Stuart Seto. The twister was an EF0, the smallest category possible, and no one was hurt, he said.
The tornado was the first in Los Angeles since 2004, according to USTornadoes.com which tracks twisters. Weather Service meteorologists could not confirm that.