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…