Windy weather felled trees in cities across the Bay Area

BERKELEY, Calif. (KGO) -- Windy weather felled several trees in the Bay Area and in Concord some very large trees toppled over onto cars and nearly injured a passenger.

A fallen tree brought traffic to a halt in Concord for several hours. A eucalyptus nearly crushed a white Corvette on Concord Avenue around 11:30 a.m.

Ken Yamamoto, the driver of the car, said he saw the tree start to fall in front of him, but he had nowhere to go.

As it turned out, it's a good thing he was in the inside lane, a position that left him and his car mostly unscathed.

"I'm thinking, Whoa, I wish I had been driving my beat up truck," he said.

The 50-year-old tree belonged to Buchanan Fields Golf Club.

A few minutes later, one of its fellow eucalyptus trees, maybe 30 yards away, also hit the pavement.

After being told a city crew wouldn't arrive for hours, a North Concord resident pulled a fallen pine tree out of the road himself.

Another homeowner had an ugly surprise waiting for him or her, another big pine, sheered at the waist and took the neighbors' cable and phone lines with it.

In the South Bay, a gigantic tree came crashing down near downtown San Jose. No one was injured.

The gusts pushed the 100-foot tree across the entire width of Eleventh Street, near Williams Street.

The branches pulled down some power lines, causing outages in the area.

The wind added to the San Francisco mystique for tourists visiting the Golden Gate Bridge.

Strong gusts had drivers holding on to the steering wheel with both hands. Bicyclists had a tougher time. The gusts nearly knocked some of them down.

"Steering was very difficult," Heather Lucas said. "The cross winds are a bit hard. Had to get off and walk."

"It hit like a sledgehammer," said David Gault. "We had to get off and walk the bikes. But it was fun."

Conditions weren't any better on the Bay Bridge. A high wind warning went up to alert drivers of gusts reaching 40 mph on the span.

Tuesday's winds forced planes to approach San Francisco from a different angle than usual.

Incoming flights flew over Millbrae and U.S. Highway 101 instead of their usual pattern over San Francisco Bay. Some pilots even landed at an angle to compensate for today's winds.

More than 100 flights at San Francisco International Airport have been canceled as a result of windy conditions, an airport duty manager said.

A delay program of about 90 minutes has been in effect at the airport since 11 a.m., according to SFO duty manager Dan Dinnocenti.

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