A tornado touched down Nov 16 in Denair, California, which lies four miles east of California State University, Stanislaus (Stan State).
“It was pretty crazy,” said Jeff Sheehy, who recorded the tornado outside of his home in Denair, “I went outside because it was really windy and within only a few seconds it got a lot stronger, which seemed weird. So I looked around and saw a ton of debris flying around and then I looked up and realized what was going on.”
So what caused a tornado like this to form in our area?
“A tornado needs two things to form: a large powerful thunderstorm and strong, spiraling surface winds,” said Marilyn Vogel, Ph.D., Geology Professor at Stan State.
Before you start laying out the blueprint for a safe room, or tornado proofing your residence, you need to know that California produces more “Sharknado” movies than it does high category tornadoes.
“Tornadoes are quite rare in California on average, especially compared to the eastern U.S., which has the highest number of tornadoes in the world,” said Vogel, “In California they are much more rare due to the lower likelihood of large scale thunderstorms. In California’s Central Valley we have some pretty respectable surface winds but few thunderstorms.”
With so many climate changes happening in our Central Valley, Vogel tells us not to jump the gun on directly connecting the tornado to El Nino.
“An individual tornado like the one that touched down last week cannot be directly linked to larger phenomena like El Nino or climate change. However, El Nino is a very strong predictor of thunderstorms,” said Vogel, “It may be that El Nino is putting a piece of the puzzle in place – the thunderstorms, and the strong surface winds are finding their partner in the tornado dance.”
It is important to understand that “tornado dances” in California vary from those Kansas. While their dances compare to intense Argentinian Tango’s, ours are more like Drake’s “Hotline Bling” dance – slow, awkward and with a ton of footage.  
“Only 241 tornadoes were detected in California from 1950 to 2012. A total of nine tornadoes were reported in Stanislaus County during that time” said Vogel, “although the National Weather Service has found that these numbers are strongly dependent on population density and the number of people who have smart phones.”
Once more, we continue to capture and share experiences like this, due to the evolving types of technology.  Feel free to share your photographs of videos with us at The Signal by tagging us @CSUSignal on Facebook & Twitter, and @CSU_Signal on Instagram.