Tornado touches down

No, Dorothy, you weren’t in Kansas this weekend. You were in Glenn County, California.

It may be rare in this part of the country, but a tornado hit Saturday along County Road 62 near Road WW, destroying a barn and damaging an unused chicken coop.

“It took the roof off the barn and raised havoc with the frame,” property owner Keith Hansen said, adding “the building is destroyed.”

Hansen, who lives about three miles from the property, said the tornado “hit another small building and tore the roof clear off. It blew over and landed on the garage.”

The wind “tore out one pen and wrapped it around the power lines. Some of the tin roof went as much as a half mile away,” he said.

He used to raise pheasants in the old chicken coop, but it has been empty for some time, he said.

Dennis Clark, 44, watched the funnel cloud develop from his home on County Road 66 north of Princeton. “I was watching the clouds, as a farmer does, thinking it might rain,” he said. “To the north, you could see the clouds fall out of the sky like when it rains real heavy.”

Clark noticed white clouds and dark clouds mixing together as lightning flashed across the sky. He felt the winds shift around his house.

“It was coming from all directions at any given time, then it would die down and pick back up,” Clark said. Minutes later, he spotted the first of two funnel clouds. When the second one touched down, he called his brother Mike to say he spotted a small tornado.

“My brother said, ‘It’s not that small because it just wiped out ... (a) barn,’” Clark said. Knowing the property was inhabited, he then called the Glenn County Sheriff’s Office.

Watching his first tornado was “exciting until it wiped out a barn, then scary because you’re worried about people,” Clark said. “I was thinking I was glad where I was and not und erneath it. We were two miles away, and that was close enough for me.”

No injuries reported

The family that leases the property from Hansen has four children, but they weren’t home when the tornado hit. The house was not affected, and no one was injured.

Hansen, a former Glenn County supervisor, said the two family dogs still are scared. One was found more than a mile away and the other, normally active, now simply “rests his head on your lap,” he said.

Oddly, Hansen’s home on Road 61 was hit by a tornado six years ago.

“I never did like wind,” he said.

Lt. Phil Revolinsky of the Glenn County Sheriff’s Office said three units went to the site and determined Hansen’s place was the only one hit.

He said a dispatcher notified the National Weather Service in Sacramento. They were grateful for the information, because the twister had not registered on their equipment, Revolinsky said.

The National Weather Service pronounced the event, about 3:09 p.m. not far from Butte City, a confirmed tornado.

Similar to hurricanes, tornadoes are rated based on severity, according to Jason Clapp at the National Weather Service in Sacramento. On the Enhanced Fujita Scale of zero to five, Saturday’s twister measured zero to one, he said.

“They’re never really strong in our neck of the woods; typically they’re small,” he said.

Funnel clouds are seen here occasionally, with four or five reported last year around Artois and the south county, the weather service told Revolinsky.

Funnel clouds become tornadoes when they make contact with the ground or structures on the ground.

The weather phenomenon that created the twister is known as wind shear, Clapp said. Wind shear occurs when low level winds travel in a different direction than upper-level winds.

“We had a front approaching with low level trough of warm, moist air followed by an upper level trough of cold air,” Clapp said. “That set off thunderstorms in the area.”

There probably have been 10 to 15 tornadoes in the area over the last 30 years, according to the weather service.

Unfortunately, Hansen was hit by two of them.

“Certain things happen and you just accept them,” he said. “It’s just one of Mother Nature’s little offspring.” An insurance adjuster is scheduled to view her handiwork today.

Editor Michael S. Green contributed to this report.