Gilroy
– Sheriff’s deputy Brett Moore was skeptical when he got the
call about 4:15pm: A tornado had hit Gavilan College.
Gilroy – Sheriff’s deputy Brett Moore was skeptical when he got the call about 4:15pm: A tornado had hit Gavilan College.
But when Moore saw the torn awning of a rented trailer and the dismembered limbs of a thick tree lying on the ground near the intersection of Santa Teresa Boulevard and Mesa Road, he believed it.
“It apparently came out of the sky, hit our trailer, hit the tree and disappeared,” said Don Irving, who reported the Saturday incident to the Sheriff’s Office. “It singled us out in the whole Santa Clara Valley.”
Irving was sitting in a camping trailer, providing communications for the 200-kilometer Tierra Bella Century Bicycle Ride, which began and ended at Gavilan College. The San Jose man heard a roaring wind, which shook the trailer and tore apart the tree, and then the winds disappeared. Fearing for the bicyclists, Irving called 911.
Moore talked to a few nearby residents who felt a strong gust of wind that blew objects around. As he approached Irving’s trailer, the deputy found hail strewn across the ground and several thick branches, roughly two feet in diameter, torn from “a very large and otherwise healthy tree.”
“Nobody’s heard of a tornado out here,” said Moore, “so we were pretty surprised.”
Duane Dykema, a forecaster with the National Weather Service, said he’d received no reports of a tornado in the area, though the radar did show “a pretty intense shower” that moved through Gilroy, as well as some hail.
“It’s rare, but it wouldn’t be unheard of,” Dykema said, “especially in the spring.”
