A tornado ripped off roofs and swept away vehicles in a Southern California town on Wednesdayas a storm sweeps across the western United States, already hard hit by a range of weather events.

The mass of whirling wind tore out in the town of Montebello, near Los Angelesforcing residents to seek shelter.

“I was driving… and I saw a tornado in front of me and I had to turn back,” a local trader told the station. KTLA.

“The tornado ripped the roof off the building, smashing all the car windows. The cars were destroyed, it was a disaster”.

Images showed what appeared to be a roof flying over industrial buildings.

Aerial photos recorded holes in several roofs, as well as bent or broken pipes and installations after the passage, as well as cars being towed from parking lots.

The National Weather Service (NWS) said it was investigating the weather event, describing it as “a weak tornado”, in addition to another in Carpinteria, further north, that “about 25 mobile homes damaged”.

Tornadoes, violent rotating columns of air that hit the ground, are nature’s most violent storms, according to the US Weather Service.

They can carry winds of up to 300 miles per hour and destroy a neighborhood in seconds.

That’s what the weather service estimates both events recorded wind gusts of up to 85 miles per hour.

Likewise, “it is a significant tornado by California standards given that it struck a populated area and clearly caused major damage,” meteorologist Daniel Swain said on Twitter.

The tornadoes came on the second day of a powerful storm that battered an already drenched California with more water and snow.and cut down trees and cut electricity supplies to thousands of people.

Flood warnings have been issued in several communities, while parts of others are under water.

California has been hit by a dozen atmospheric rivers in recent weeks. These moisture-laden weather systems come from the Pacific Ocean layers of snow thrown down and showers of torrential rain western regions that have suffered two decades of historic drought.

Scientists argue that climate change, caused by human actions, is exacerbating these climate whips, which creates more intense periods of drought, as well as more humid rainy periods.