We're having an early kickoff to fire season this year and/or there is no distinct fire "season" anymore, with an offshore wind event expected to raise wildfire risks across Northern California this week.

The National Weather Service has issued a Red Flag Warning for the Sacramento Valley starting Wednesday morning, and they are warning of elevated fire risks in much of the North Bay as well due to an incoming wind event.

Winds are expected to be blowing out of the north and northeast Wednesday evening into Thursday, with low humidity expected particularly in the Napa Valley and Sacramento region. Gusts of 30 to 45 miles per hour are expected in parts of Northern California, leading to the elevated wildfire risk.

Wind gusts in Sonoma and Napa counties are expected to peak around 25 miles per hour, but could be stronger at higher elevations.

PG&E has not yet announced any public safety power shutoffs (PSPS), but the utility is warning that some shutoffs may occur on Wednesday, as the Chronicle reports.

Exact addresses that can expect power shutoffs will receive notifications perhaps later today or on Tuesday.

In its seven-day PSPS forecast, PG&E says that shutoffs are possible Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday across eight NorCal counties: Colusa, Glenn, Lake, Napa, Sonoma, Sutter, Tehama, and Yolo.

PG&E has routinely performed these targeted shutoffs since 2019, when the PSPS protocal began in the wake of the deadly Camp Fire in November 2018. In 2021, after PG&E faced criminal charges stemming from the fire, a federal judge imposed strict guidance over when power shutoffs must occur, in order to decrease wildfire risk from sparking power lines.

This year has already seen one PSPS event in mid-May, when power was cut for pockets of PG&E customers in 15 counties, with 4,700 customers affected in all.

Typically these shutoffs, which often coincide with offshore wind events like the Diablo winds, tend to occur later in the summer and in the fall, when wildfire risk tends to be greatest from dry ground conditions as well.

Windy conditions in Sonoma County and elsewhere in the Bay Area led to many reports of downed trees, and one fallen tree took the life of a Santa Rosa man. There were also multiple car crashes in the county that may have been unrelated to the weather.

A man was killed Sunday on the 800 block of Howard Street in Santa Rosa when a tree or large tree branch reportedly crashed down on him, per KTVU.

The man was hospitalized with injuries and later died, according to the Santa Rosa Fire Department.

Separately, a 23-year-old woman was seriously injured by a falling tree branch on the 300 block of Steele Lane in Santa Rosa on Sunday. The Chronicle reports that she was hospitalized and remains there.

Fallen trees were reportedly elsewhere around the Bay, including in Livermore, where KTVU reports that at least two homes were damaged.

Winds were reportedly gusting up to 40 miles per hour and higher in some spots in the North Bay, and the National Weather Service notes one 86-mile-per-hour gust in the Santa Cruz Mountains overnight.

Cal Fire was battling multple small fires around the Bay amid the windy conditions, including a 3-acre blaze in Napa County, as ABC 7 reports, as well as a vegetation fire along the Altamont Pass that grew to 80 acres on Sunday.

Possibly unrelated to the windy conditions, Sonoma County saw several fatal vehicle crashes on Saturday, as KRON4 reports. These included a solo vehicle crash around 4:14 pm Saturday on Highway 101 in Santa Rosa, in which a Mercedes being driven by an elderly man veered off the highway and struck a tree, killing him and fatally injuring his wife, who was a passenger. She later died from her injuries at the hospital.

A motorcyclist on a Harley-Davidson bike crashed into the rear of a truck on Porter Creek Road about three hours later, and the motorcyclist died, per KRON4.

An earlier crash on Highway 1 near Salt Point State Park, which occurred around 1:50 pm, involved a Nissan Rogue that hit a tree after the driver lost control of the vehicle. As the CHP tells KRON4, the car overturned down an embankment, and one male passenger was pronounced dead at the scene. The driver and two other passengers survived with injuries.

Related: Family of Sonoma County Toddler Killed By Fallen Redwood Tree Speaks Out

Top image: Photo by Walter Martin

Photo by Clement Proust

• Police in the East Bay city of Brentwood shot and killed a man whom they pulled over under suspicion of driving under the influence on Christmas Eve. Police say the man resisted arrest and reached for a high-powered rifle before they shot him. [KTVU]

• Local health officials warn that infections from a new variant of the flu are steadily rising in Bay Area children. The variant, known as “H3N2 Flu A subclade K,” jumped from 4.9% on December 6 to 9% a week later. [Mountain View Voice]
• The university of Santa Cruz’s historic Lick Observatory is temporarily closed after winds of up to 114 miles per hour damaged part of the Great Refractor dome. [NBC Bay Area]

National:

• Ashlee Buzzard, the mother of 9-year-old Melodee Buzzard, whose body was found December 6 in rural Utah two months after she was reported missing in Southern California, was arraigned Friday on first-degree murder with special allegation. [NBC News]
• Around 1,800 US flights have been canceled and over 22,000 delayed due to severe weather, with more than half taking place at New York’s John F. Kennedy and LaGuardia airports, and New Jersey’s Newark Liberty International Airport. [Reuters]
• One lucky winner scored the entire $1.817 billion Powerball jackpot on Christmas Eve at a gas station outside Little Rock, Arkansas, but they haven't come forward to claim it yet. [Associated Press]

Video of the Day:

• Following his big Thanksgiving feast, Bay Area TV Man delighted a new batch of unsuspecting BART passengers on Christmas Day when he transformed a train into the "Polar Express," placing a festive tree by the car’s doors and hanging up lights and garland throughout the train. He then handed out gifts to passengers on the train and at Civic Center, Daly City, and Lake Merritt stations.

Image: Leanne Maxwell/SFist

It's been an extremely — thankfully! — quiet fire season for our local area, but some serious fire danger is headed our way this weekend with a weather system that promises dry, offshore winds that often present wildfire hazards.

This morning we told you about the "inside slider" weather system that's forecast for all of California this weekend, which will bring Diablo Winds to the Bay Area and the equally sinister Santa Ana winds to Southern California. Subsequently, the National Weather Service has issued its third Red Flag Warning of 2023 for the Bay Area and the most widespread warning in two years.

As ABC 7 reports, the warning extends all the way north to Ukiah all across the East Bay and down to the South Bay, and includes the San Mateo coast and Peninsula hills as well. The only parts of the region that will be spared from fire danger are San Francisco and the inner ring of land around the Bay, including low-lying parts of Oakland and San Jose.

As the Sonoma County Fire District explains on X, Sonoma County has two Red Flag Warnings tomorrow — one that starts at 5 a.m. for higher elevations, and a second that kicks in for the rest of the county at 5 p.m. and extends through Sunday evening.

During a Red Flag Warning, residents need to be hyper-vigilant not to cause sparks with any equipment or vehicles or campfires, and not to discard cigarettes anywhere near vegetation.

Wind gusts are expected to peak Saturday night around 45 to 60 miles per hour in some spots, though the Chronicle forecasts gusts peaking at 35 miles per hour for higher elevations in San Francisco and Oakland.

Six San Francisco “window failure” incidents in a two-week span have the mayor, supervisors, and the DBI vowing a safety crackdown, but it’s unclear any of them understand why so many buildings are having their windows shattered, cracked, or even falling to the ground.

The month of March brought wind storms for the ages, with gusts reaching 77 miles per hour here in San Francisco. That led to a frankly terrifying rash of incidents where a glass panel flew off 555 California Street, a window flew off the Millennium Tower, and the 350 Mission Street building known as Salesforce East saw two broken window incidents in a week, for a total of six incidents that the SF Department of Building Inspection (DBI) charitably calls “glass failures.”  

In fairness, this is happening in Oakland too. But that’s no comfort to Mayor Breed, the SF Board of Supervisors, or the DBI, whom the SF Business Times reports are all introducing new inspections and building regulations to hopefully put a halt to all these windows flying off buildings.

That seems reassuring, except that beyond the high winds (which cannot be prevented), no one seems sure yet what exactly is leading to these dangerous window mishaps. “I mean this is not happening in Singapore with typhoons. This is not happening in Chicago, the windy city. Why is it happening here?" Supervisor Aaron Peskin said to KTVU after the March 22 storm. "I expect to introduce [window] legislation on April 4th as well as call hearings to bring national and international experts.”

That April 4th board meeting is in progress as of this writing, so we’ll know more about what he’s requesting later today.

For her part, Mayor Breed announced new safety requirements Tuesday morning. “The San Francisco Department of Building Inspection (DBI) will now require accelerated façade inspections for San Francisco buildings that are 15 stories or taller and built after 1998,” Breed’s office said in their announcement. “Owners of these buildings will now be required to provide a licensed architect or engineer evaluation of the entire building façade to ensure the safety and stability of all façade elements, including windows.”

Again, very reassuring language, but KRON4 points out an obvious oversight here. “Of the six buildings that experienced glass failure during the storms, three are less than 30 years old,” that station points out. So if the incidents are split evenly between older and newer buildings, it seems arguable whether this “built after 1998” clause is addressing the real problem here.

We should split hairs here on that “six buildings” description: KPIX details that five SF buildings had glass failures March 14-28, yet two of these incidents happened at 350 Mission Street (completed in 2015, so a newer building) for a total of six incidents. But even prior to that wild, windy two weeks of March 14-28, we saw glass fly off Fox Plaza on January 4, and wind ripping panels off the SFPUC building in February. So determining a pattern here may not be easy.

And just to address the unspoken elephant in the room… Do we really trust San Francisco DBI to identify and correct these window hazards? That agency’s reputation is in the toilet right now over bribes and kickbacks sometimes granted for permitting shoddy work. Regrettably, they’re the only DBI we have. And while no one has been significantly injured yet by these “glass failures” yet, we are faced with the unsettling prospect that if high winds continue, we may be putting our lives in the San Francisco Department of Building Inspection’s hands.

Related: Yet More High-Rise Windows Crack as Salesforce East Has Second Broken Window Incident In a Week [SFist]

Image: via Swinerton

"This storm’s record-breaking sea-level pressure readings and ferocity will be studied in academic and operational spaces across the weather industry," writes the Chronicle's meteorologist Gerry Diaz. "While it’s not unheard of to have storms like this one rapidly intensify, it is unusual to see it occur just a few miles off the shoreline."

Yes, Tuesday's bizarre, hurricane-like windstorm took everyone, include those whose job it is to predict the weather, by surprise. SFist noted the eye of the cyclonic storm heading directly for San Francisco Tuesday afternoon, and it turns out this was one of two swirling eyes which spun off from each other over Monterey Bay — one made landfall here and on the Peninsula, the other hit the Santa Cruz coast.

"Meteorologists watched on radar as two areas of circulation formed just off the Monterey Peninsula," Diaz writes. "The Fujiwhara effect — when two circulations spin around each other — was in full effect by midmorning over Monterey Bay."

ABC 7 meteorologist Drew Tuma called the storm's behavior "unprecedented," noting that the barometric pressure dropped to 984.4mb, beating the monthly record, which was 990.2mb. "We've never experienced a March storm as strong as the one we just went through," Tuma said on Twitter.

And the San Diego-based Center for Western Weather and Water Extremes said that a double-eyewalled storm like this "likely won't ever happen again in our lifetimes over coastal CA."

Some 700 trees came down in San Francisco alone, and the storm resulted in at least five deaths locally, all from falling trees.

Meteorologists say that Fujiwhara effect storms like this occur globally, but they are rare and beyond rare for our coast. "In most instances, the centers of winter storms either stay out at sea or make landfall in remote stretches of the Oregon and Washington coast, keeping the strongest winds away from populated areas," the Chronicle's Diaz writes.

Also, while we may not see something quite so intense, we should all brace for more wet and windy weather early next week. Per Diaz, "The unusual weather may persist for another week or two, as the European and American models once again suggest that a couple of low-pressure systems off the coast of Hawaii tracking east toward California."

Previously: There Were Two Storm-Related Deaths In San Francisco, At Least Three Others Elsewhere In Bay Area

Top image: A tree down outside 1030 Post Street, where one person was killed on Tuesday. Photo by SFFD PIO

• One week to the day after winds knocked over a big rig on the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge, another semi was knocked down on the Bay Bridge, and trucks are not being allowed on the bridge right now. At about 5:40 p.m., the Highway Patrol announced “The #1 & #5 traffic lanes are now temporarily open on I-80 [eastbound] on the San Francisco/Oakland Bay Bridge, west of Treasure Island. All [eastbound]  lanes will be closed again temporarily when emergency vehicles arrive to upright the overturned truck. Expect delays!” [Chronicle]

• And in another windstorm deja vu, eight days after a panel was blown off 555 California, the same thing happened again Tuesday afternoon with windows down the street at 50 California. There are currently street closures at California, Clay, Davis, and Sacramento Streets. [KRON4]

• 32-year-old Financial District/South of Market bookstore Alexander Book Company has announced its permanent closure, though they have not announced a specific closing date. The store’s website says “All books currently in the store will now receive a 25% discount.” [Alexander Book Co.]
• The wind and rain storms have left at least 80,000 households across the Bay Area without power. [SFGate]  
• SFMTA is considering adding more meters to currently unmetered areas in the northeast Mission District, and a public hearing on the matter is underway Tuesday night. [SFMTA]

Image: @CHPSanFrancisco via Twitter

The promise of very gusty winds came true Tuesday afternoon, complete with more glass flying off a downtown SF building, and satellite imagery of the cyclonic storm that slammed the California coast is pretty dramatic.

Today's storm came with a very windy punch, and we can probably expect some more down-tree alerts to arrive in the next hour or two. As of 4 p.m., we just saw one alert come through for an "obstruction" at California and Davis streets in the Financial District, which appears to be falling glass from 50 California Street. NBC Bay Area reported on shards of glass falling from the high-rise, and what appears to be a puncture in a larger glass pane on the 20th floor.

An "obstruction" has also been reported at Polk and Post streets.

Castro resident Violet Blue tweeted at 3:53 p.m. that the wind "just slammed trash cans into the parked cars in front of my flat hard enough to set off car alarms."

Weather West's Daniel Swain just tweeted "Whoa" along with the radar image of the cyclone hitting the Bay Area, the eye of the storm making about a direct hit with San Francisco.

The Chronicle's Gerry Diaz said this was not, technically, a "bomb cyclone" because it did not reach the exact barometric specifications. But it "did see a dramatic drop in pressure, falling below 990 millibars" which "means it got close to reaching the benchmark that would’ve made it a bomb cyclone."

Wind-gust measurements are probably going to be coming in later, but the National Weather Service noted the strongest gust recorded so far was 78 miles per hour in the Santa Cruz Mountains.

PG&E's outage map shows multiple power outages around San Francisco and all the way down the Peninsula, with one significant outage, marked as over 5,000 customers, in the southwestern quadrant of SF near Daly City.

Here's one photo of a tree down on Jackson Street in the FiDi:

It feels like every year meteorologists introduce us to new terminology that was once just the purview of professionals and weather geeks. And this week in California, it's all about the "inside slider" — not the baseball pitch, but the slang term used for a northerly weather system that has an unusually steep southward trajectory.

Unlike the Diablo winds it triggers, an "inside slider" can happen here in Northern California at multiple times in the year — though offshore wind events here are becoming more common in odd months when they didn't used to occur.

This "inside slider" that began on Sunday is bringing cold air and a low pressure system down from the Pacific Northwest, creating a weather system — and wind — coming at us from the Sierra to the east, as opposed to from the ocean as normally happens. The air is literally sliding down "inside" the coastline, over land, while an area of high pressure continues to sit off the coast.

The National Weather Service says this pattern will cause "North to Northeast winds [that] will be 15 to 25 mph with gusts 35 to 45 mph, locally higher gusts up to 60 mph." And those winds are going to be mostly concentrated along the region's easternmost mountain ridges — hence PG&E's power shutoffs are concentrated this time in Solano County, eastern Napa County, and small pockets of far-eastern Contra Costa and Alameda counties.

Below is a video from Sacramento affiliate ABC10 from February 2020, explaining what an "inside slider" does in the wintertime with weather happening in the eastern Sierra, in contrast to what's happening in the Central Valley and Sacramento.

As has been illustrated before, Diablo and Santa Ana winds are also caused when an area of high pressure pulls winds over the Sierra and other mountains from the Great Basin. These hot, dry winds get sped up as they come across the Central Valley and then come rushing over the ridges around the Bay Area, creating times of high fire danger. The "Diablo" term began being used widely in the Bay Area after the 1991 Oakland Hills Firestorm to distinguish these winds from the Santa Ana winds in Southern California, and to suggest that they're coming from the direction of Mount Diablo, but they are part of the same weather phenomenon.

Today's "inside slider" is bringing increasingly high winds all over the Bay Area, as it did overnight in some locations. And as with previous Diablo wind events, these are often not felt down in the valleys, while extremely high winds can be gusting over nearby ridge tops — that was what occurred in the 2017 Tubbs Fire in Santa Rosa, when residents were caught by surprise by a surge in fire from the east being driven by winds they hadn't been feeling.

Anyway, don't park your car under any trees today if you can help it! That's the advice of ABC 7 meteorologist Drew Tuma, looking at the winds headed our way.

A large tree came down amid gusting winds Sunday night in San Mateo County, hitting power lines and causing some damage, but no fire was sparked.

The exact time of the incident is unclear, but Cal Fire crews were on the scene as of 5 a.m. Monday assessing the damages. The tree came down in the coastal village of El Granada, just north of Half Moon Bay, south of Mavericks Beach.

When the tree fell, it took a power line with it, and it caused damage to one home and three vehicles, according to a tweet from Cal Fire.

It's not clear how many power customers were affected by the downed power line.

A significant wind event forecast by the National Weather Service caused overnight gusts that exceeded 50 miles per hour off the San Francisco and San Mateo County coasts, with some gusts recorded inland that were north of 40 miles per hour.

The event, known as an "inside slider," can trigger Diablo and Santa Ana winds, and it's caused when northerly air and a low pressure system move in a steep southward direction, pulling air from the eastern side of the Sierra over across the ridges to the west.

This system was also clearly causing high winds out over the ocean as well.

Predicted Diablo winds between Monday night and Wednesday morning failed to materialize in most parts of the Bay, however a second wind event is forecast to begin Wednesday night and into Thursday morning.

PG&E has shrunk its originally planned geography for tonight's public-safety power shutoff (PSPS), informing some North Bay customers that changing weather conditions have negated the need for the power to go off. Still, a number of areas of northern Napa county and east Santa Rosa are still being warned of a PSPS in the next 12 hours, along with isolated parts of the East Bay around Mount Diablo and south of it, as well as the hills east of San Jose.

The National Weather Service reports that Mount Diablo was seeing some of the highest winds as of this morning.

Shutoffs are already underway in other pockets of the region, and below the National Weather Service's Brian Garcia discusses the Red Flag Warnings that take effect starting at 10 p.m. on Wednesday and 1 a.m. Thursday.

Northeast Napa County, in the area of the Glass Fire and LNU Lightning Complex fires, is expected to see the highest winds in the coming 48 hours, and the Mount Diablo area as well.

Gusty offshore winds are still expected to hit multiple high-elevation parts of the Bay Area late tonight and Thursday night, with the possibility of gusts up to 40 miles per hour or more.

If you're wondering if you're going to lose power and haven't received an alert, check your address here.

But let's hope that the threat passes as it did earlier this week without too much drama. The fire- and power-shutoff-weary North Bay especially could use a break.

Also, some rain would be nice at some point.

Sunday's high winds knocked loose tree branches, blew down power lines, and shattered a skyscraper window in San Francisco. Tens of thousands were without power in the East Bay and South Bay, and 30 people had to be evacuated from one neighborhood in Castro Valley due to collapsing tree and live wires.

Oakland fire officials reported over 100 calls about downed power lines on Sunday, and the Chronicle reports that some 80,000 PG&E customers were without power at one point in the day — though that was down to 30,000 as of 9 p.m.

The Alameda County Fire Department told ABC 7 that it had received over 300 calls related to the wind storm, and in certain parts of the East Bay, especially at higher elevations, the effects of the wind were dramatic.

There was a cascade of events along Heyer Avenue in Castro Valley that led to 12 homes having to be evacuated. As ABC 7 reports, it began with just a couple of eucalyptus trees falling — one fell onto a car and briefly trapped the driver inside — but then a fallen tree broke a water main, which in turn saturated the soil and compromised the roots of more trees.

A total of 15 trees fell along Heyer Avenue, downing at least nine power lines along with them, leading to a small emergency situation. Thankfully no one was injured.

Elsewhere around the Bay, a pair of kite-surfers had to be rescued near the Golden Gate after a distress call related to the wind — they were safely rescued at Marshall Beach, per the San Francisco Fire Department. And there were reports of crushed cars and trees blocking roadways all over the Bay.

Up in the Sierra, extremely high winds were recorded at a couple of Tahoe ski areas. Ward Peak at Alpine Meadows recorded a gust of 125 mph, per the Chronicle. But a widespread report of a 209 mph gust at Kirkwood Mountain may have been the result of equipment error. As the Chronicle reports, forecasters reported "multiple errors" at the weather station there after that super-high gust was recorded.  

San Francisco winds are fierce winds.

Credit: James at Omega it's jameth