Once every ten of fifteen years, the San Gabriel Valley will get a windstorm, usually in November or December, that does quite a bit of damage. I remember going to Pasadena after a couple of those storms and seeing the streets littered with leaves and broken branches and the occasional uprooted oak or sycamore. Sometimes we would spot a few dislodged roof shingles here and there, or a stray aluminum awning. There were usually crews out repairing downed power lines. Apparently it was worse this time— maybe a fifty-year storm instead of a ten-year storm. I certainly never saw anything like the damage to trees along Green Street in this video after any of the storms I witnessed.
Neither did I ever see a filling station lose its canopy, as shown about one minute into this video, which also features a more typical scene of back yard citrus and avocado slaughter near the end. We didn't even get anything like that up here. I didn't even lose the weak fence along the south side of my back yard. But then the wind season is still young, and I could still end up dealing with a tree falling onto the house this month.
