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The public record 1996 to today

California wind history

The public federal storm record holds 3,229 days with wind on record somewhere in California since 1996, 2,387 of them at 58 mph or more, across 41,345 reports. The strongest on record is 200 mph on 30 November 2011 in S SIERRA MTNS County. 427 cities have wind on record within 10 miles of their centre, and each has a page that says what was searched, which storm days more than one source carried, and how far away the nearest instruments stood. The hail family has its own index: California hail history.

3,229

Days with wind on record, statewide

2,387

Days at 58 mph or more

200mph

Strongest measured, Nov 2011

427

Cities with wind on record nearby

Wind by city in California

Ranked by days with wind on record within 10 miles of each city's centre, then by population, each with its strongest figure: measured in the observed tone, an estimate in the estimated tone. Every place of five thousand people or more has a page; the busiest are listed here and the rest are a disclosure away.

  1. 01 San Fernando 339 days 130 mph
  2. 02 Santa Clarita 323 days 130 mph
  3. 03 South Lake Tahoe 309 days 136 mph
  4. 04 Mammoth Lakes 280 days 179 mph
  5. 05 Desert Hot Springs 243 days 90 mph
  6. 06 Anaheim 212 days 94 mph
  7. 07 Irvine 196 days 94 mph
  8. 08 Yorba Linda 192 days 100 mph
  9. 09 Placentia 191 days 100 mph
  10. 10 Simi Valley 190 days 87 mph
  11. 11 Orange 188 days 94 mph
  12. 12 Villa Park 188 days 94 mph
  13. 13 Tustin 187 days 94 mph
  14. 14 Corona 186 days 94 mph
  15. 15 Cathedral City 182 days 92 mph
  16. 16 Truckee 182 days 138 mph
  17. 17 Rancho Mirage 175 days 92 mph
  18. 18 Camarillo 173 days 101 mph
  19. 19 Agoura Hills 169 days 98 mph
  20. 20 Chino Hills 163 days 100 mph
  21. 21 San Bernardino 159 days 103 mph
  22. 22 Thousand Oaks 157 days 85 mph
  23. 23 Westlake Village 157 days 85 mph
  24. 24 Fontana 154 days 89 mph
  25. 25 Ridgecrest 154 days 76 mph
  26. 26 Rialto 151 days 103 mph
  27. 27 Norco 151 days 88 mph
  28. 28 Calabasas 151 days 98 mph
  29. 29 Moorpark 148 days 87 mph
  30. 30 Santa Barbara 147 days 95 mph
Every place in California (428)

Wind days by year in California

Days with wind At 58 mph or more

The busiest year on record is 2013, with 163 days of wind, 111 of them at 58 mph or more.

Strongest wind recorded in California

Measured Estimated, not measured

Strongest wind recorded in California: date, wind speed, whether it was a gust or a sustained speed, evidence and where the report was taken.
Date Speed Reading Evidence County
30 Nov 2011 200 mph Gust Ground observation S SIERRA MTNS
20 Feb 2017 199 mph Gust Ground observation WEST SLOPE NORTHERN SIERRA NEVADA
20 Feb 2017 199 mph Gust Ground observation PLACER
20 Feb 2017 193 mph Gust Ground observation PLACER
30 Dec 2014 179 mph Gust Ground observation MONO
14 Feb 2019 173 mph Gust Ground observation MONO
13 Feb 2000 172 mph Sustained Ground observation E NEVADA/E PLACER/E EL DORADO/NE ALPINE
27 Feb 2006 169 mph Gust Ground observation PLACER
The next step

Get the wind report for an address in California

The figures on this page are the record across California: enough to know there is something to cite, and from where. None of it says what reached one roof.

Run the address and the same archive is searched at the property: every wind report with its distance and bearing from the roof, the nearest station's readings, the analysis grid sampled at the address and labelled as analyzed, and the federal record each figure came from, in a document that states its own method. Ready in minutes.

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How this page is made

What counted
Every wind report in the archive filed under California by its source, with the cities ranked by the reports within 10 miles of each centre. A wind day is a calendar date with at least one report: four sources describing one storm are one afternoon of wind, not four. A report's figure is its gust where it has one and its sustained speed otherwise, and the tables say which.
Measured and estimated
A speed reported by a person or an instrument on the ground, whether read from an anemometer or judged by an observer from what the wind did, is filed as observed; a speed inferred from a grid or an analysis is an estimate and is marked as one. The two are never added together.
Severe
A day counts as severe when its strongest figure reached 58 mph, the National Weather Service criterion for a damaging gust. Weaker wind is still on the record, and still on this page.
Stations
A station reading is the wind at the instrument, not at any address, and is listed with the distance from the page's centre to the instrument. Readings are fetched for the ground around an address when a report is run and held afterwards, so the stations on a page are the ones within 30 miles that the archive holds readings from.
What this is not
Neighbouring places share reports, so counts are not exclusive. This page is the record around a place; it is not a report on any property, and it states no opinion about what reached one.
Terms used on this page
Peak gust, sustained wind, independent source: each term this page uses is defined in the glossary as the report prints it.
The record
Searched from 1996 to today. Compiled 2 November 2026 and rebuilt daily as the archive deepens. Records are reproduced as the federal sources published them. The coverage page states what the record holds, by kind and by year.

About this record

Everything here is reproduced from public federal and volunteer weather records, as the agencies and observer networks that publish them released it. Titan Weather compiles the record; it does not observe the weather, and it is not affiliated with any source it cites.

No archive holds everything. Storms cross places where nobody is standing, instruments and observers cover some areas better than others, sources revise their records, and recent reports can take weeks to arrive and settle. Coverage also thins as the years go back: an early quiet stretch may describe who was watching rather than what the weather did. Where this page shows nothing, nothing was found in the sources searched, within the period and area it states. That is not a finding that no weather occurred.

A record sits where its source filed it. Reports made from the ground are commonly logged against a town, a landmark or an offset from one rather than the spot where the measurement was taken, so any distance shown for one carries that source's own location error. Radar detections and warning geometry are instrument-located and do not.

These pages describe the public record near a place or on a date. They do not establish what reached any particular property, and nothing here is insurance, legal or engineering advice.