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The WeatherMatrix Blog
Jesse Ferrell

I just checked the stats on the California storm so far this week and the highest wind and wave readings were not affected yesterday or today. Obviously the big story yesterday was the tornadoes; today it is the snow, with several ski resorts reporting in with more than 4 feet of snow already. The breakdown is shown below. But the big story the next few days will be storm surge (which is rare there) and low pressure (it'll probably make your ears pop).

The lowest pressure ever measured in the state is 28.85" Hg according to Chris Burt, author of Extreme Weather. As of this hour, the pressure is already 28.92" at Crescent City in the northernmost part of the state (and 28.88 on the Oregon coast). But tomorrow night is when the big storm swings in further south, and if you believe the NMM forecast model, it will be 28.80" on the central coast, breaking the all-time record (in other words, a stronger storm has not hit the state in recorded history!).

Click the pic to see more records.

searched around found this:

Tornado rips through Costa Mesa neighborhood--Video

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COSTA MESA, Calif. (KABC) -- Tornado warnings were out for parts of Orange County this afternoon, and at least two funnel clouds came ashore, causing damage. One was in Costa Mesa.

Many heard the warnings that a tornado might be heading their direction, but a lot of them dismissed it thinking that tornados don't happen in California. This may not be Kansas or Oklahoma, but around 1 p.m., folks in Costa Mesa got a chance to feel what it is like to live in tornado alley.

"It was something like out of a movie," tornado witness Holly Moro said. "It was black, it was pitch black outside and just crazy. It was unbelievable."

Found your source on Accuweather and found this also:

Radar From California Tornado/Waterspout

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UPDATE: Check out satellite shots on the CIMSS blog. I will get back to broadcasting the "greatest hits" (waves/winds/rain/snow) of this week of California storms this evening. Michael on our Facebook page points out a couple of interesting factoids via the NWS: 1. Some locations and even the entire state could set low pressure records this week, and 2.) A rare storm surge is being forecast for the coast (in addition to 20-foot waves onshore!).

What was probably a bona fide waterspout (which came onshore as a tornado) hit between Long Beach and Huntington Beach Tuesday afternoon. Some videos and photos of the flooding and damage are available on the LA Times site. ABC7 claims to have photos of the actual tornado in a video, and there are pics via Twitter (1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5) but as you'll notice on the LA Times site, some of those may be hoaxes. I'm surprised there weren't more pictures, but the tornado may have been rain-wrapped. Here's a radar shot; hover over the image to see the annotation showing the possible "hook echo" and the mesocylone's rotational signature. Again, this was a very impressive-looking thunderstorm by California standards. Tornadoes are rare in California but there were 73 twisters in Los Angeles & Orange Counties between 1950 and 2009; nothing stronger than an F1 since 1983.

LOOPS: REFLECTIVITY | STORM-RELATIVE VELOCITY* | SRV ZOOME