Hail history in San Francisco, CA

NWS San Francisco Bay Area says a Storm Prediction Center Marginal Risk for severe thunderstorms touches part of the Bay Area roughly once a year.¹ NWS says offshore wind events in the Bay Area typically occur in late summer and early fall.²

Notable storms

1. December 14, 2024Pre-dawn thunderstorms prompted the first tornado warning on record for San Francisco, but an NWS survey from Golden Gate Park to the Richmond District found damage from straight-line wind gusts around 80 mph. San Francisco International Airport recorded an 83 mph gust.^1,3,4
2. February 4, 2024A bomb cyclone brought a 77 mph gust at San Francisco International Airport and 62 mph at a San Francisco station. NWS says more than one million customers lost power at some point during the storm.⁵
3. March 21, 2023A rapidly intensifying cyclone brought a 64 mph gust to San Francisco International Airport, and over 110,000 customers lost power in the Bay Area and Santa Cruz County.⁶
4. December 31, 2022An atmospheric river dropped 5.46 inches of rain on downtown San Francisco, a record for any December day and the city's second-wettest 24 hours since records began in 1849. Residents reported flooding in the Mission, SoMa, the Sunset, the Marina and the Embarcadero, and water from flooded streets got into some buildings.^7,8
5. April 16, 2018A spring storm brought hail across the Bay Area, and NWS received reports of pea to dime size hail through the day.⁹
6. January 4, 2008NWS called this one of the strongest storms in the past ten years, with gusts of 70 mph at the Golden Gate Bridge and 88 mph on Angel Island that brought down trees and power lines.¹⁰

Warnings and alerts

NWS San Francisco Bay Area/Monterey issues the forecasts and warnings for the city.¹¹ AlertSF, the city's official emergency text alert system, can be joined by texting a ZIP code to 888-777.¹²