Dianna Stammerjohn searches for an owl’s nest at the site of a fallen pine tree, caused by last weekend’s storm, by the Bison Paddock, in the Outter Richmond neighborhood of San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park on Dec. 16, 2024. Stammerjohn said the owls had been nesting there for years. (Gina Castro/KQED)
San Franciscans woken up early Saturday by a tornado warning might have hoped it was just a bad dream, but even though a twister never touched down in the city, destructive winds and rain weren’t a passing nightmare.
Crews are still clearing downed trees and repairing damage after the storm, which produced gusts of up to 80 mph through Golden Gate Park and the Richmond District, according to the National Weather Service. The Department of Public Works is fielding more than 350 reports of fallen and damaged trees on city streets, and the Recreation and Parks Department estimates that up to 100 more were downed throughout its parks.
Golden Gate Park and the Mission District were hit particularly hard, according to department spokespeople.
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“About 50 to 100 trees fell across the whole park system, and about half of those at least were in the west end of Golden Gate Park,” said Tamara Aparton, the parks department’s communications director. “It was a really violent storm in the west end, and it knocked down a lot of really big trees.”
There was some damage to the outer paddock of the park’s beloved bison pasture, but Aparton said the inner paddock remained intact and all of the bison were safe.
In the Richmond District, water seeped into the gym at George Washington High School after a rooftop skylight was damaged, according to San Francisco school district spokesperson Laura Dudnick. On Monday, she said the facilities team was working to repair and clean the space.
A San Francisco Parks and Recreation worker wraps red caution tape around a tree stump by the bison paddock in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco on Dec. 16, 2024. (Gina Castro/KQED)
On the other side of the city, crews have been clearing hard-hit streets and sidewalks in the Mission District. Fallen street trees broke windows, wrecked cars and landed on some buildings, and the Department of Public Works is also handling damaged fencing and pavement, spokesperson Rachel Gordon said.
Utility infrastructure was also damaged in the storm, which had 100,000 customers without power at its peak, according to PG&E. The company did not yet have a tally of the damage on Monday.
No injuries have been reported to either the public works or parks department.
In addition to many downed trees in the Mission, an entire cluster near San Jose Avenue between Noe Valley and Bernal Heights came down at once, causing a road closure on Saturday.
“The big culprit really is wind and then saturated ground,” she said. “If the ground is really wet, there’s not a lot for the roots to grip onto, so they’re more vulnerable to damage, and [that’s] when large limbs come down.”
While the total number of downed trees in this storm wasn’t unusually high, city officials said their cleanup will take at least a few more days.
“We have no magic wand to make the fallen trees and the branches disappear,” Gordon told KQED. “There are real people who are going out to pick them up and move them away.”
She said crews have been out before dawn and late into the night clearing trees. When a full tree falls, it needs to be chopped into smaller pieces before it can be moved, while trees that are still partially standing have to be chipped away.
“We have gotten the major incidents cleared, but we still have asked for a little bit of patience,” Gordon said. “It might take several more days at least to get all of the green waste picked up and cleared away.”
