CNN
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For the first time in history, a tornado warning was issued for downtown San Francisco on Saturday as severe storms ripped through the city, just a week after a tsunami warning sparked widespread panic in the region.

The San Francisco Department of Emergency Management confirmed that the tornado threat ended around 6:14 a.m. PST after the storm moved northeast of downtown.

“Now seek shelter in a basement or an interior room on the lowest floor of a sturdy building. If you are outdoors, in an RV, at home or in a vehicle, move to the nearest appropriate shelter and protect yourself from debris,” SFDEM urged residents in an earlier tweet.

The National Weather Service (NWS) also issued a flood warning and a high wind warning, with sustained winds of up to 40 miles per hour expected in areas along the coast. San Francisco Airport reported a wind gust of 72 knots (83 miles per hour) at the time the storm passed. A video shared on Facebook shows extreme winds shaking palm trees in downtown San Francisco.

More than 10,000 people were without power in San Francisco on Saturday morning.

California experiences an average of nine tornadoes per year. There have never been any tornado warnings recorded for downtown San Francisco, the NWS confirmed.

A week earlier, a tsunami warning was issued for the San Francisco Bay Area and nearly 5 million people along the coasts of Northern California and Oregon after a magnitude 7.0 earthquake struck off the California coast on December 5. A quake this strong is relatively rare, with officials reporting only about 15 cases worldwide each year.

Coastal communities avoided a potential disaster and the warning was lifted by the National Tsunami Warning Center after some residents fled their homes. Most major earthquakes outside the coast prompt such warnings because experts have little time to assess the immediate risk and the consequences of a tsunami could be catastrophic.

The quake’s epicenter was in the Pacific Ocean south of Eureka, California, the US Geological Survey said. Eureka is the largest coastal city between San Francisco and Portland, Oregon, and approximately 300 miles northwest of Sacramento.