The advisory includes the San Francisco Bay Area, including Sonoma, Napa, Larkspur, Vallejo, San Francisco, Berkeley, Oakland, Santa Cruz, Monterey and other ocean and bayside communities.

In 2011, a tsunami hit California after a large earthquake in Japan. More than 100 boats in Santa Cruz were damaged. The magnitude 9.0 earthquake triggered a massive wave that traveled 5,000 miles across the ocean, causing damage up and down the West Coast as far south as San Diego.