Wind Gusts Up To 75 MPH In East Bay Topple Trees, Knock Out Power

EAST BAY, CA — As forecast by weather officials, fierce winds pummeled many parts of the East Bay and Bay Area over the weekend, toppling trees and knocking down power lines, causing outages for 10s of thousands of PG&E customers. Monday morning, more than 8,400 Bay Area PG&E customers were still without power following winds that peaked Sunday at 75 mph on Mt. Diablo, 47 mph in Concord, 62 mph in the Oakland Hills and 87 on Mt. Saint Helena, according to the National Weather Service San Francisco Bay Area.

Authorities on Sunday received hundreds of reports of downed lines and trees, blown out windows, canceled ferry runs and dangerous driving conditions over bridges across the Bay Area.

Photos shared with Patch showed large trees yanked from their roots in Sonoma and Benicia.

A Patch reader who lives on Hillcrest Avenue in Benicia reported a tree fell right outside their bedroom window Sunday, landing on their neighbor's front porch.

"I looked down the street and the corner house was worse," Billie wrote. "Their tree fell onto the roof putting a hole in the roof. Poor neighbor was in bed and thankfully is OK. Lucky guy. So we have no power and internet connection soooooooo just waiting for PGE to come replace our line to our house and neighbors too. I must say, I have some pretty terrific neighbors here. I am just so happy no one was hurt."

See photos shared by Billie here.

Nearly 65,000 PG&E customers in the Bay Area were affected at the peak of the wind storm.

As of 6 a.m. Monday, about 5,660 customers in the East Bay still had no power, along with 2,136 in the South Bay, 445 along the Peninsula and 246 in the North Bay, PG&E spokeswoman Karly Hernandez said.

That was down from about 28,000 customers as of 10 p.m. Sunday, according to the utility.
As of 8:30 a.m. Monday, outages were still affecting customers in Martinez, Concord, Pleasant Hill, Livermore and Danville, according to PG&E's outage webpage.

The windy weather had mostly died down later Monday morning, with the National Weather Service's wind advisory for the Bay Area expiring at 7 a.m.

However the wind advisory remains in effect through 11 a.m. Tuesday for the East Bay Hills and North Bay Mountains. Breezy conditions will remain for lower elevations Monday morning, weather officials said.

Bay City News Service contributed to this report.