Intense winds on Tuesday caused all kinds of mayhem, leading to widespread power outages, flight delays, trees damaging buildings, glass flying off high-rises, one toppled big rig, and at least one escaped suitcase at SFO.
The evening news on Tuesday and the local morning news broadcasts on Wednesday have been filled with stories of storm-related damage, with some crazy, sustained winds causing all kinds of chaos yesterday.
All across the Bay Area, but especially in the South Bay and East Bay, schools are closed Wednesday due to ongoing power outages. KPIX has a list of closed schools in the Cupertino Union, De Anza, and Mount Diablo school districts, and KTVU has another list including Los Gatos, Campbell, Fremont, and more.
Some 200,000 Bay Area PG&E customers were still without power as of late Tuesday, as KTVU reported, and PG&E's outage map still shows thousands of customers without power on the SF Peninsula, and across the region.
Out in Concord, winds flipped a couple of prop planes onto their noses at Buchanan Field, as documented below by the Contra Costa County Fire Protection District, and a third plane was flipped upside down, per KTVU. No one was injured there.
High winds wreaking havoc around CCC this afternoon & evening. Includes numerous vehicle accidents, trees & wires down, creating hazards. High winds forecast thru 11 pm, making it an excellent evening to stay home & off area roads. If you must drive tonight, use extreme caution. pic.twitter.com/68VUIUEZrm
— Con Fire PIO (@ContraCostaFire) March 15, 2023
The tree-toppling stories have been everywhere: a larg pine tree uprooted and crashed into an apartment building in Livermore; a 100-foot-tall eucalyptus tree crashed into a home in Saratoga and took a power line with it; both Highway 92 in Half Moon Bay and southbound 280 in Millbrae were closed due to toppled trees; multiple trees came down on houses in Palo Alto; several eucalyptus trees in a row came down on some duplex buildings in Union City; and BART was single-tracking between Pleasant Hill and Concord due to a very large fallen tree that fell onto a train.
For our frontline staff today, it's been an effort to remove fallen trees on our tracks due to how big and tall some are. This is the tree between Pleasant Hill and Concord.
— BART (@SFBART) March 15, 2023
Yellow Line service has resumed normally but with single-tracking between Pleasant Hill and Concord. https://t.co/kMgaUDBvrB pic.twitter.com/e3PYGWN6ES
There were ground stops and delays at SFO Tuesday due to the wind and reports of gusts exceeding 80 miles per hour. And Air Canada passenger Declan Weir posted this amusing sight, a roller bag that got loose and was just blowing across the tarmac at SFO.
It’s so windy at SFO today, nobody wants to take off, except this bag… #outtahere #byebyebaggy #AtmosphericRiver #BayArea pic.twitter.com/8u5qdgToCo
— Declan (@declanweir) March 14, 2023
Previously: Glass Being Blown Off Downtown SF Tower 555 California Street, Shelter-In-Place Order Issued