Gone with the wind

The McDaniel family knew this was no ordinary coastal squall when their front door blew wide open and they looked outside to see that the barns were gone.

Also missing was a glassed-in porch that had been a favorite spot for watching the ocean from the bluff about a mile south of Fort Ross State Park on the west side of Highway 1.

"It almost imploded on itself," a shocked Stacy McDaniel said Friday, the day after Mother Nature rudely interrupted her family's dinner. The storm "took the glass and threw it one way on the garden where the chickens are, and then it somehow spun around and went the other direction to the barns and blew them the way they went."

The McDaniels can't say for sure because it was dark and the cacophony lasted only seconds, but they believe the destruction was caused by a tornado - an exceedingly rare event on the North Coast.

Only a handful of funnel clouds have been reported in the area in the past 20 years. Thursday's suspected twister could be the worst since Feb. 27, 1983, when a tornado left a milelong path of destruction in a residential area of high-priced homes just north of Santa Rosa.

"The debris was everywhere as far as you could see," said Bill Seymour, a captain with the Timber Cove Fire Protection District, which responded to the McDaniel home at about 9:45 p.m. Thursday. "It looked like pictures you see of Oklahoma when a tornado goes through."

The next morning revealed the extent of the damage: The high winds ripped apart the patio, two large barns and part of a third, scattering debris about 400 feet across Highway 1, where gawkers stopped to take photos.

Seymour said the wind damaged or destroyed buildings across a swath of land about 150 feet wide while leaving other structures untouched, leading officials to surmise that a tornado had come through.

"Generally, high winds move in one direction, especially off the ocean," said Dennis Meredith, assistant fire chief for Timber Cove. "This leads me to believe that there was more of a twisting to the wind."

The wind was so strong that pieces of tin were wrapped around fence posts, Seymour said.

No injuries to people or livestock were reported, but firefighters and Caltrans workers labored for two hours clearing debris from the highway, where one lane had to be shut.

The destroyed buildings included a large barn that was a landmark on the coast.

The "Red Barn," as everyone called it even after it was painted white several years ago, once was part of the Pedotti Ranch, which was operated as a dairy until 1952, when the Pedottis sold the herd and switched to sheep and beef cattle.

The Pedottis leased the ranch for 69 years until the state Parks Department acquired a portion of the property, including the Pedotti Campground, now officially called Fort Ross Reef Campground.

Cattle still roam the property, which is owned by the Soper-Wheeler Co. in Strawberry Valley in Yuba County, Stacy McDaniel said.

She said the property owner and insurance agents were expected Friday to survey the damage.

The McDaniels rent the three-bedroom, two-bath house that also has a basement, which would have come in handy had they had any warning about the possible tornado.

Stacy McDaniel said she and her son were eating a chicken dinner in the kitchen and her husband was watching TV in the living room when they heard a loud roar, followed by the front door exploding open.

"We all went, 'Wow, what was that?'" said McDaniel, who is on disability from her job as a bartender at the Timber Cove Inn. Her husband is an auto body man.

Window-rattling storms are common on the exposed bluffs. Thursday night's cannonade included a lightning strike in the ocean and wind gusts up to 50 mph, said Dave Soroka, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Monterey.

"It certainly could have been a small tornado," he said. "That was a pretty potent front that came through."

The most recent tornado sighting in Sonoma County before Thursday's storm was Dec. 30, when a small tornado tore some shingles and a porch awning off a Santa Rosa home.

Funnel clouds caused minor damage in 1992 in Santa Rosa, Windsor and Sebastopol. In 1988, a tornado uprooted a barn in the Hessel area south of Sebastopol and scattered it across a 100-foot area.

Along the coast, tornadoes typically form in the ocean as water spouts before coming ashore, Soroka said. Another possibility is a microburst, which features a downward blast of air without the funnel.

Without more advanced weather equipment on the Sonoma Coast, the truth may never be known.

"We've seen similar events produce these isolated, small, short-duration tornadoes, but we really don't have any data to interrogate this storm," Soroka said.

Stacy McDaniel said the couple now have a view of Highway 1 that they didn't have a few days ago when the barns were standing.

The barns contained tools and auto parts for a BMW, as well as a kayak and an ultralight plane. The only thing left of one barn was the porch, which had Christmas lights strung around it.

Left untouched, much to the family's bewilderment, were an SUV and a barbecue outside the house.

"I'm still dazed by it," McDaniel said. "I just keep looking around."