By Neil Farrell ~
In what’s being called a “tornado-esque” blast of wind Wednesday morning, several trees were knocked down, boats were tossed about at the Morro Bay Yacht Club and a swath of damage was scoured from the bay to the Roundabout.
Sometime about 7:15 a.m. a squall (for lack of a more precise term) blew in over the bay wreaking havoc on moored boats, slamming into the Yacht Club, and unleashing a torrential, albeit short duration, rain.
Dana McClish, the Yacht Club’s commodore told Bay News that he was called by the owner of Kayak Horizons, which is next door to the yacht club. He’d been told by citizens who live on the bluff above the club’s Quonset hut and storage yard, of the damage being done to his kayaks, and the club’s Day Sailors, kayaks, paddleboards, and other craft.
“They said it was like a little twister had come down,” he said. “It was really bizarre.”
One of the small sailboats, which the club uses for summer sailing lessons and bay races, sustained a broken mast, others were toppled off their trailers and damage and the club’s yard was left in chaos.
“Everything was scattered pretty well,” said McClish. Club members rallied quickly to clean up the mess. McClish said he hadn’t seen wind do this kind of damage since the early 1980s, when he was working at the Inn at Morro Bay and saw the wind “knockdown” sailboats in the bay, pushing them over untilt he masts hit the water and then popping back up again. “I haven’t seen anything like that since then,” he added.
A City street lamp on the east side of the Embarcadero between the storage yard and the China Dragon Restaurant, was bent over and nearly snapped off, he said. A City crew removed it.
A City official that lives on Pacific Street said she heard the wind’s roar as she was getting ready for work.
Fire Department Eng., Mike Hoese told The Bay News that they answered their first call at 7:19 a.m. — about 5 minutes or so after the squall blew through town — reporting damage near the Roundabout.
Several large tree branches were torn loose along Pacific and Shasta Avenue, Hoese said, and several trees were blown down altogether.
They had to use chainsaws to cut through downed trees that blocked entry to some homes.
At the Valero Station at Morro Bay Blvd., and Kern Avenue, a clerk described it as a “tornado,” an actual funnel cloud, that blew over signs there and damaged one of the station’s pumps.
At am/pm, a City street tree was cracked and nearly all of its leaves were stripped by the wind.
Across the street at Mobil, a 12-inch diameter eucalyptus tree was toppled taking one of the station’s lampposts down with it. A City crew cutting up that tree up said at 10 a.m. that they’d been out since shortly after the squall came through working to clear up the debris that littered the Downtown streets, which included about a million eucalyptus seed pods scattered literally everywhere.
Rain continued throughout the morning and into the afternoon, with a somewhat steady drizzle intermixed with at times very heavy rainfall.
Hoese said a house on Shasta was hit by a large branch causing minor damage and several front yards were torn up as well.
PG&E Meteorologist, John Lindsay told The Bay News that the National Weather Service would have to study the “debris field” to officially call it a tornado. He added that it might have been a “down blast” — “an area of strong, downward moving air associated with a downdraft from a thunderstorm” or it might well have been a tornado.
Also, “It’s not that uncommon for a waterspout [tornado over water] to make landfall,” Lindsay said. “Another important point to remember, tornadoes, especially weak ones, tend to jump about.”
With rain expected to continue Wednesday and into Thursday, letting up Friday, the series of storm fronts — being called the “arrival of El Niño” — might not be over yet.
