Tornado touches down in Roseville neighborhood

ROSEVILLE, Calif. (KGO) -- Wednesday evening there was some wild weather in Northern California and some powerful video showing a rare tornado, touching down in the middle of a neighborhood. A Roseville resident captured some tense moments when a twister blew through his Placer County subdivision.

Everyone saw the tornado touch down in one spot around 7:30 p.m. in a Roseville neighborhood.

ABC7 News got an up-close look at ground zero. The owner of the house says he watched his picnic bench slowly lift up and spin around with debris flying around in the air. Then the fence that used to be in his backyard exploded into shards of wood that sprayed the house next door, blowing out its windows.

Video was taken by Jason Rodgers, one of the neighbors, as the tornado began forming over the neighborhood. They say it hovered over the homes, the sky got dark, and then it dropped down, tore up a yard and disappeared.

Another neighbor, Danny Carter, was shooting video just as it struck. He told us, "That's pretty close. You know, it hits pretty close and it was just so loud and we were watching the news the whole time and I thought, 'This is it. It's definitely coming.' So it was pretty frightening for a little bit."

Mark Thompson, the owner of the house where the tornado struck, told us, "It was just over in a matter of 10 seconds. Really scary. I'm very lucky because I shouldn't have been out there filming it and I didn't heed the warning, thinking that this is California we don't have tornados here."

It wasn't the only tornado that touched down, Wednesday night. There was another one that was spotted near the town of Willows, in Glen County, about 100 miles north of Roseville. The person who shot video of that tornado says it was moving about 5 to 10 mph, just west of Interstate 5. They also had huge amounts of hail out there.

No one was injured.