The strong winds that kicked up late Saturday at Coachella are forecast to continue Sunday.
The National Weather Service has issued a wind advisory that will be in effect until 6 p.m. PDT Sunday in the Southern California deserts and mountains. A high wind warning is in effect from 6 p.m. until 9 a.m. Tuesday. The strongest winds are likely in the overnight hours.
According to the weather service, winds Sunday afternoon could reach 20 to 30 mph, with gusts up to 45 or even 55 mph. Sunday night, add another 5 mph to those forecast wind speeds. Current conditions can be seen here, on a map from the National Weather Service. On a positive note, the high in Indio is only supposed to be 88, a few degrees cooler than the first two days.
The weather service’s closest wind gauge to the festival grounds (which are in the city of Indio) is in the next-door city of Coachella. The strongest wind gust registered there in the past 24 hours was 26 mph. About 15 miles northwest of Indio, in the city of Thousand Palms, the strongest gust was 41.
The strongest gust in the Coachella Valley (which encompasses all of the desert cities) was 62 mph at 3 a.m. in Whitewater, a notoriously gusty spot about 30 miles northwest of Indio.
On Saturday, the festival grounds got noticeably windier as the sun went down, but it wasn’t until about the time headliner Phoenix started playing that it got uncomfortable. And by the time Phoenix ended and the crowd started clearing out, the dust was blowing across the polo fields.
Were you in the campgrounds overnight? How did the tents fare?