Wow It's Freaky Windy ...

Today was freakishly windy ... You possibly noticed I was talking about the wind when I posted this.

When I shot these, the wind speed was 36-40 and the the gusts were 45-49 at the San Francisco Airport (SFO). Granted, I was in a bit of a sheltered location, because I was in the forest up on skyline at Kings Mountain, which is a bit higher than SFO and the highest thing around. So gusts at the top of the trees might have been hurricane force or higher, when I was shooting those arrows. Based on my crazy wind estimation skills, I think the winds where I was shooting might be about 15 mph, with gusts to 30 mph, since I was in a valley and under the canopy.

The weather today was crazy, and there were gusts as high as 58 mph today at the San Francisco Airport.


These two shots are taken somewhere close to the San Francisco Airport (notice the incoming plane), very near the height of the insanity, at 3:45 or 4:00 P. M. I cruised out there because I decided it was too dangerous to drive on the freeway, and I was wondering what it might be like to kayak in this kind of wind. There were three foot swells in a place that normally is calm, and swimmers, kayakers and windsurfers might be found "playing" around. For me ... it looked scary as hell.

Here's what it might look like in the morning.

On the San Mateo Bridge, about 5 miles south of these photos, there were several newsworthy events in the afternoon. Within a short period of time ... one, a truck turned over heading west on the bridge, two, a commercial fishing boat got pushed by the wind into the bridge causing damage to the bridge, and three, a kayaker (capsized and out of his boat), had to be hoisted up from a position in the water hugging the bridge pillars. Currently the bridge is still closed in the westbound direction, with current estimates for reopening at 4 A. M.

Never mind all this, I shot a bull's eye at 40 yards with an unpredictable gusty wind ...