Wind gusts hammer the North Bay with speeds as much as 90 mph reported near Healdsburg

Strong winds battered the North Bay on Sunday with gusts as fast as 90 mph that swept through the region, leaving downed utility lines, toppled trees and scattered power outages for local residents.

The winds, which picked up about 3 a.m., led to downed power and telecommunications lines throughout Sonoma County.

PG&E had 1,530 customers without power in Sonoma County as of 11 a.m. Sunday, with a total of 662 in Glen Ellen and another 685 in Sonoma, said spokeswoman Deanna Contreras. But the windstorm led 112,000 PG&E customers to be without power by 7 p.m. Sunday, with outages hitting the East Bay and Central Coast particularly hard, according to a company news release.

Work crews were busy Sunday responding to the affected areas to make repairs, Contreras said. The San Francisco-based utility did not enact any planned power shut-offs, a step meant to reduce wildfire risk as was done last fall. The wet weather from this winter has reduced such fire risk, Contreras said. But the utility had 800 employees responding to the outages.

Some residents were busy cleaning up debris caused by the winds or were waiting for crews to remove large trees that had been toppled onto their homes or cars.

Juan Acevedo was supposed to perform maintenance on his van Sunday morning outside his residence on Riverside Drive in Sonoma, but gave up because of the strong winds. The decision proved wise, as a 75-foot tree was toppled about 10:30 a.m., crushing his van and another van parked next to it.

“I was talking with my friend and said, ‘It’s too windy, let’s do it tomorrow.’ And I see the tree went down,” Acevedo said.

He added that he was 12 feet away from the tree when it collapsed.

The highest reported gust in the Bay Area was 90 mph at a 3,300-foot high marker east of Healdsburg at Pine Flat Road, said Steve Anderson, a forecaster with the National Weather Service.

Wind gusts had been reported around 50 mph near Acevedo’s house in the morning, but those speeds decreased in the afternoon. Charles M. Schulz–Sonoma County Airport had a high wind gust of 36 mph, while the biggest wind on the coast was near Mount Tamalpais at 44 mph, Anderson said.

The winds were triggered by a high pressure system in northern California meeting with a low pressure system from southern California that swept in from the Southwest, he said. The Kirkwood Ski Resort in the Sierra Nevada recorded a 209 mph reading, but those readings had not been verified, according to a tweet by the National Weather Service office in Reno.

“It kind of squeezes the air,” Anderson said of the weather pattern. “It’s like with a garden hose and you put your thumb over the end.”

The high winds should last through 11 a.m. Monday, he said. They were supposed to peak from 3-9 a.m. on Monday at higher elevation areas above 1,000 feet, according to the weather service.

You can reach Staff Writer Bill Swindell at 707-521-5223 or bill.swindell@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @BillSwindell.