28-06-2025
- Climate
- San Francisco Chronicle
Recent Bay Area winds aren't just strong, they're record-breaking
Has the Bay Area been windier than normal recently? Some form of this question has been echoing across the region. On Reddit, a frustrated user kicked up an active thread by asking, 'What's up with the wind lately?' Local wind surfers have been discussing the feistier than usual winds on their own online forums. We've also had a number of our readers ask if it's been unusually windy.
With so many people asking, we decided to look at the data to determine if May and June were indeed exceptionally windy for the Bay Area.
We analyzed average maximum daily wind gusts at five Bay Area airports: Santa Rosa, SFO, Oakland, San Jose, and Livermore. We chose maximum wind gusts over average wind speed because they better reflect the memorable, extreme weather experiences people tend to notice.
The Bay Area's wind patterns in 2025 have indeed been abnormally strong. So far through June 26th, Oakland is on pace to have its windiest month of June on record, with an average wind gust of 34.23 mph, nearly 4 mph higher than the second place year of 2010 — the city has records going back to 1914. Livermore and Santa Rosa, are currently tracking towards a top three windiest June on record.
May was equally remarkable. Oakland tied its second-highest value ever, while San Jose, Santa Rosa and Livermore all posted their third windiest Mays since records began. In fact, all five monitored stations ranked in their top five all-time for May gust intensity.
The longer-term trend is just as striking. Over the past decade, May and June have grown measurably windier across the Bay Area, particularly in the East Bay. Since 2000, SFO, Oakland, Livermore and San Jose have all logged multiple top five wind gust seasons during that window, with 2025 ranking near the top at each.
But why?
To account for this year's windiness, UCLA climate scientist Daniel Swain points to an unusually persistent and eastward-shifted North Pacific High this year. 'This is exactly the pattern you'd expect to generate unusually strong northwesterly winds along the coast and in some of the near-coastal inland valleys,' he said. The tighter pressure gradient between that offshore high and the Central Valley thermal low ramps up wind speeds across the region.
Bay Area wind expert and meteorologist Mike Godsey agrees, citing the powerful gusts on June 20 and 21, which were driven by a particularly intense and low-altitude coastal jet fueled by that same setup.
The longer-term trend is harder to pin down, but there are hints. The Fourth California Climate Assessment projects stronger Bay Area winds as rapid inland warming tightens the seasonal pressure gradient with the cooler coast, a dynamic that peaks in May and June.
And how we measure wind matters, too. As Bay Area meteorologist Jan Null notes, wind observations became automated in the early 2000s, replacing decades of manually eyeballing when the anemometer hit its peak. That suggests the long-term data should be viewed with some caution.
Still, if you've felt like it's been windier than usual this year, you're probably not wrong. And you're definitely not alone.
