Rare tornado strikes Los Angeles suburb as ‘bomb cyclone’ smashes US
A rare yet powerful tornado struck a Los Angeles suburb on Wednesday, ripping roofs off a line of commercial buildings and sending the debris twisting into the sky.
One person was injured in the extreme weather, with the National Weather Service confirming the tornado had touched down in Montebello at around 11.20am on Wednesday.
The weather service later said that the tornado had winds of 86mph to 110mph, making it the strongest tornado to hit the Los Angeles metropolitan area since March 1983.
A fallen tree and debris are seen after a tornado damaged several buildings in Montebello
“It’s definitely not something that’s common for the region,” said meteorologist Rose Schoenfeld of the weather service.
City spokesman Alex Gillman said the injured person was taken to a hospital in Montebello and he did not know the severity of the injury.
Debris was spread over more than one city block, while inspectors checked 17 buildings in the area and marked 11 of them as uninhabitable, according to the fire department. Several cars were also damaged.
One man who experienced the tornado, Michael Turner, said he could hear the winds get stronger from inside his office at the 33,000sq ft warehouse he owns just south of downtown Montebello.
Debris was spread across Montebello in California following the tornado
He went outside after the lights started flickering to find his employees gazing up at the ominous sky, before bringing everyone inside.
“It got very loud. Things were flying all over the place,” Mr Turner said. “The whole factory became a big dust bowl for a minute. Then when the dust settled, the place was just a mess.”
Among other damages to his property, a 5,000sq ft section of roof was “just gone,” Mr Turner said.
He said his polyester fibre business, Turner Fiberfill, could be closed for months, adding: “I’ve been in California since 1965. Never seen anything like this. Earthquakes – we’re used to that.”
The severe weather comes amid a strong late-season Pacific storm that brought damaging winds and more rain and snow to saturated California.
The National Weather Service said the storm was tapering off in California from north to south while pushing inland across the southwest, the Four Corners region and the central and southern Rockies.
A boat and houseboat float submerged at Jack London Aquatic Center in Oakland, California
Extreme weather caused by ‘explosive cyclogenesis’
Meteorologists said extreme conditions across California were caused by an extraordinary drop in barometric pressure over the eastern Pacific and described it as “explosive cyclogenesis” – otherwise known as a “bomb cyclone”.
In a briefing on Tuesday, UCLA climate scientist Daniel Swain confirmed this notion by saying the weather system had reached the benchmark for a phenomenon known as bombogenesis, or a “bomb cyclone”, indicating a rapid drop in pressure, according to the Los Angeles Times.
A tree lies on a car on Parker Avenue in San Francisco after heavy rainstorms on Wednesday
Two people were killed on Tuesday as the storm battered the San Francisco Bay area with powerful gusts and downpours. A total of five deaths have so far been attributed to the storms.
Another tornado hit a mobile home park in the Santa Barbara County city of Carpinteria on Tuesday, with gusts up to 75mph that damaged around 25 homes.
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Elsewhere, some residents of north-central Arizona were told to prepare to evacuate their homes on Tuesday because of rising water levels in rivers and basins.
Around 82,000 customers were without electricity Wednesday evening throughout the state, according to PowerOutage.us.
A man has pleaded guilty to murdering four University of Idaho students in November 2022.
Bryan Kohberger, a 30-year-old former criminal justice student, was arrested at his parents’ home in Pennsylvania weeks after the killings.
He was accused of sneaking into the rented home in Moscow, Idaho, which is not far from the university campus, and attacking Ethan Chapin, Xana Kernodle, Madison Mogen and Kaylee Goncalves.
Kohberger previously pleaded not guilty to charges of murder and burglary.
It comes after he agreed to a plea deal, just weeks before his trial was set to begin, in a bid to avoid the death penalty.
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Bryan Kohberger during a hearing in Latah County District Court in Moscow, Idaho. Pic: Reuters
Kaylee Goncalves, Maddie Mogen and Xana Kernodle, and Xana’s boyfriend Ethan Chapin
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It is certainly big – 940 pages long – but on the question of beauty, Congress is divided.
Donald Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” has sparked ugly debate – both for its ambitious scope and for the political manoeuvring that’s gone on around it.
Elon Musk branded it “political suicide” for Republicans and threatened to fund challenges against those who back it in next year’s midterm elections.
But the president hit back, suggesting he would consider cutting Musk’s lucrative government contracts or even deporting him back to South Africa.
The “big, beautiful bill”, or HR 1 to give the proposed legislation its proper title, is Mr Trump’s signature spending and tax policy.
It extends tax cuts he secured in 2017 and bankrolls his second-term agenda in the White House.
File pic: Reuters
Here is a summary of the key points:
• Permanent tax cuts: Extending relief from the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act
• Small business support: Doubling the small business expensing limit to $2.5m (£1.8m) to help businesses expand and hire staff
• Child tax credit: Expanding the child tax credit and making it permanent, benefiting 40 million families
• Making housing affordable: Expanding the low-income housing tax credit to kickstart construction of affordable homes
• Defence and border security: Allocating $170bn (£123bn) for border security alone, including $46bn (£33bn) for completing the border wall
• Made-in-America incentives: Providing tax breaks and incentives for domestic manufacturing to promote US industry
• Healthcare and social welfare: Implementing restrictions on Medicaid, which provides healthcare for millions of Americans, and reducing funding for certain healthcare and nutrition programmes.
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Clash over ‘monster’ debt bill
Musk, Mr Trump’s former ally and the man who established the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), claimed the bill “raises the debt ceiling by $5trn, the biggest increase in history.”
“DOGE is the monster that might have to go back and eat Elon,” was President Trump’s response.
The national debt currently stands at $37trn (£27trn) and the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates that the bill could add $2.4trn (£1.7trn) to that over the next decade.
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Trump threatens to ‘put DOGE’ on Musk
Bill splits Republican ranks
Republican Senator Thom Tillis voted against the bill and, following criticism from the president, announced he would not seek re-election in North Carolina.
He said he couldn’t support it due to his concerns about the impact cuts to Medicaid would have on people in his state.
Democrats in the Senate forced a full reading of all 940 pages and then a vote-a-rama, a series of marathon voting sessions.
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Listen to The World with Richard Engel and Yalda Hakim every Wednesday
In the House of Representatives, it passed by a single vote, 215-214. In the Senate, Vice President JD Vance, had to cast the deciding vote to break a tie (50-50).
Legislatively, the progress of the bill has been a case study in the complexities of American law-making.
Strategically, it represents a mammoth effort to consolidate the president’s policy agenda and secure his legacy.
In the long Gaza war, this is a significant moment.
For the people of Gaza, for the Israeli hostages and their families – this could be the moment it ends. But we have been here before, so many times.
The key question – will Hamas accept what Israel has agreed to: a 60-day ceasefire?
At the weekend, a source at the heart of the negotiations told me: “Both Hamas and Israel are refusing to budge from their position – Hamas wants the ceasefire to last until a permanent agreement is reached.
“Israel is opposed to this. At this point, only President Trump can break this deadlock.”
The source added: “Unless Trump pushes, we are in a stalemate.”
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Will Trump achieve a Gaza ceasefire?
The problem is that the announcement made now by Donald Trump – which is his social-media-summarised version of whatever Israel has actually agreed to – may just amount to Israel’s already-established position.
We don’t know the details and conditions attached to Israel’s proposals.
Listen to The World with Richard Engel and Yalda Hakim every Wednesday
Would Israeli troops withdraw from Gaza? Totally? Or partially? How many Palestinian prisoners would they agree to release from Israel’s jails? And why only 60 days? Why not a total ceasefire? What are they asking of Hamas in return?
We just don’t know the answers to any of these questions, except one.
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Dozens killed at beachfront cafe in Gaza
We do know why Israel wants a 60-day ceasefire, not a permanent one. It’s all about domestic politics.
If Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu were to agree now to a permanent ceasefire, the extreme right-wingers in his coalition would collapse his government.
Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich have both been clear about their desire for the war to continue. They hold the balance of power in Mr Netanyahu’s coalition.
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If Mr Netanyahu instead agrees to just 60 days – which domestically he can sell as just a pause – then that may placate the extreme right-wingers for a few weeks until the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, is adjourned for the summer.
It is also no coincidence that the US president has called for Mr Netanyahu’s corruption trial to be scrapped.
Without the prospect of jail, Mr Netanyahu might be more willing to quit the war, safe in the knowledge that focus will not shift immediately to his own political and legal vulnerability.
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