A storm that brought flooding across the Bay Area this weekend, punctuated by a false alarm tornado warning for San Francisco residents just before 6 am Saturday morning, brought an actual tornado to Santa Cruz County.

That tornado warning turned to be no false alarm for people living in the small Santa Cruz County town of Scotts Valley, though the tornado did not actually arrive until the afternoon.

At around 2 pm Saturday, a surprise tornado touched down in the city's commercial district, bringing wind gusts with peak speeds of 90 miles per hour and a small twister that was seen moving across a parking lot. Over about five minutes, the tornado knocked down power lines, overturned several vehicles, and uprooted trees before then fizzling out.

Five people were injured, including a Cal Fire battalion chief, after his work truck ended up being among the vehicles flipped by the tornado.

Multiple road closures and an overnight power outage followed, with most of the damage being dealt with by Sunday morning.

Scotts Valley police Captain Scott Garner, in a press release, praised his department and other agencies who worked throughout the night to restore normalcy for residents.

"Thanks to these collective efforts, all roads and businesses in the  City of Scotts Valley that were scheduled to be open today are now fully operational with power," Garner said in a statement.

Tornadoes are a rarity in California, with most experts stating that an average of 11 of them touch down in the state per year. Scotts Valley residents, understandably, expressed varying degrees of shock in their statements to the media when asked about their reaction to the event.

“I’ve never seen something like that in Santa Cruz,” one person told local outlet Lookout Santa Cruz. “And I’ve lived here my whole life.”

Photo via Cali/X