February 2026 Storm Takes Down Communications Infrastructure on Mount Laguna, CA, USA
by Sudoku Ham for ORI
At exactly 10:00 AM on Wednesday, February 18, 2026, a communications tower on Monument Peak in the Laguna Mountains was blown over during a powerful wind event, captured in real time by a nearby wildfire camera system. The tower, owned by American Tower Corporation (ATC), had been carrying an AT&T cellular site and several microwave hops. According to sources familiar with the site, that was the only functional equipment on the structure at the time of its collapse.
The failure was documented by the HPWREN (High Performance Wireless Research and Education Network) camera system. This system is operated by UC San Diego’s San Diego Supercomputer Center. Video assembled from the east-facing fixed-field-of-view camera shows a major wind event immediately preceding the collapse, with the tower going over at 10:00 AM. A before-and-after comparison of HPWREN still frames — one from February 13 showing the tower standing, another from later on February 18 showing it gone — confirms the loss. Snow visible in the post-collapse image and on the wreckage is consistent with the heavy winter weather that preceded the failure.
Damage photos obtained from CORA (Cactus Open Repeater Association) members, originally shared by Chris Baldwin, show the aftermath in stark detail. A lattice tower structure torn from its concrete foundation, the base ripped out of the ground with rebar exposed, and the wreckage draped across an equipment shelter labeled “FACILITY 3.” The concrete pier appears to have failed catastrophically, with the entire foundation block uprooted rather than the tower buckling above the base. The combination of snow and ice loading on the structure, high sustained winds, and the age of the tower and presumed lack of recent maintenance all contributed to the failure.
Steve Hansen, W6QX, first drew attention to the HPWREN imagery showing the tower’s disappearance.
The Storm
The collapse occurred during a series of storms that struck San Diego County over the span of four days. The first wave hit Monday, February 16, bringing heavy rain and winds gusting to 60 mph on Mount Laguna. A second, more intense wave arrived overnight Tuesday into Wednesday, the morning the tower fell. That wave produced winds of 80 mph at El Cajon Mountain, measured at 3:30 AM. Wind was measured at 76 mph at Birch Hill in the San Diego County mountains, and at 52 mph in the desert. The National Weather Service reported snow accumulations approaching a foot on Mount Laguna, with additional snow bands continuing through February 19. A third and final round brought further showers and gusty winds on Thursday the 19th before conditions improved Friday.
The HPWREN camera overlay on the February 18 image recorded conditions at Monument Peak of 31.1°F, 90.2% relative humidity, and 23.6 inHg barometric pressure. It was cold, and the front had clearly moved through.
What Was on the Tower?
Monument Peak (32.89°N, 116.42°W, at 6,271 feet) sits at the eastern edge of the Laguna Mountain Recreation Area within the Cleveland National Forest. It is one of the most significant multi-use communications sites in eastern San Diego County, with a coverage footprint extending from the Salton Sea south to the Mexican border and west across the county.
The ATC tower that collapsed was one of multiple structures at the site. The site hosts a diverse set of users and systems. Services known to operate from Monument Peak include the following.
Amateur Radio: The East County Repeater Association (ECRA) operates several repeaters from the Monument Peak site, including 147.240 MHz (+ offset, PL 107.2 Hz. K6KTA, which is a joint effort with CORA that participates in the CalZona Link), 446.750 MHz (- offset, PL 107.2 Hz), and 449.180 MHz (- offset, PL 88.5 Hz). These repeaters appear to have been on a different structure than the one that fell. Operators are encouraged to confirm current status on the air.
HPWREN/ALERT: This system from UC San Diego operates fixed-field-of-view and pan-tilt-zoom wildfire detection cameras, microwave backbone links, and a weather sensor suite from the site. Monument Peak is a backbone node in the HPWREN network and has been since the project transitioned from nearby Stephenson Peak. The HPWREN cameras that documented this collapse were themselves mounted on a separate structure and survived.
NASA Space Geodesy: The Monument Peak compound hosts NASA’s MOBLAS-4 Satellite Laser Ranging (SLR) system, which has operated from this location since 1981, along with a GNSS antenna and an EarthScope seismic station.
Commercial and Public Safety: There are multiple microwave relay dishes and panel antennas visible in the HPWREN imagery on surviving structures. Historical records show San Diego County Sheriff’s Office VHF low-band repeater infrastructure at the site dating to the 1960s.
According to sources familiar with the site, the only functional equipment on the collapsed ATC tower was the AT&T cell site and its microwave backhaul links. The full inventory of what had previously been on the structure versus what was still active is not entirely clear, but the tower appears to have been underutilized at the time of its failure.
What We Know and What We Don’t
The video from the HPWREN cameras answers the biggest question. When did it fall? At 10:00 AM on February 18, during the second and most intense storm wave. Sources who have viewed the time-lapse describe it as showing a clear wind event immediately before the collapse. As is often the case with periodic camera captures of structural failures, the tower is there one frame and gone the next.
What was the failure mode? The damage photos show the concrete foundation pier uprooted from the ground rather than the tower folding at a structural joint. Whether ice loading, sustained wind, a gust event, or a combination caused the failure is unknown. No formal engineering assessment has been publicly released, but commenters seem surprised about the relatively small amount of concrete that was pulled up.
What services are currently offline? The ECRA repeaters and HPWREN systems appear to have survived on other structures. The primary loss appears to be AT&T cellular coverage and microwave backhaul from this site. Operators in the coverage area, particularly in eastern San Diego County and the Imperial Valley, may have noticed cellular outages.
What Happens Next
The central question is whether American Tower Corporation will rebuild. As one source familiar with the site put it (Chris KF6AJM), the only functional thing on the tower was the AT&T cell site with a few microwave hops. Whether that single-tenant revenue justifies the cost of constructing a new tower at a remote mountaintop location in a national forest, with all the permitting, environmental review, and logistics that entails, remains to be seen. It is not clear if that is profitable enough for ATC to put money into the site.
Mountaintop tower sites in places like the Cleveland National Forest are expensive to build and maintain. Access roads can be difficult in winter. Construction requires Forest Service approval. And the economics of a single-carrier site are thin compared to a multi-tenant tower in an urban area. There has been a long-term trend away from using large mountaintop towers, with capacity replaced by fiber backhaul and fixed wireless broadband. The reason for this is that wide coverage is now less valuable than capacity per user. Higher data rates per commercial cellular user cannot be delivered by one large site covering a large land mass as easily and cheaply as can be delivered with more sites all closer to the ground.
On the other hand, Monument Peak provides cellular coverage to areas of eastern San Diego County and the Imperial Valley that are otherwise difficult to serve. The microwave hops that ran through this tower may also have been part of a backhaul chain serving other sites. The downstream effects of this loss on AT&T’s network in the region are not yet clear.
Monument Peak has weathered storms before. HPWREN documented significant wind damage at their Big Black Mountain relay site in January 2018 during a Santa Ana event with 80-90 mph winds, and the HPWREN team rebuilt that site with an improved design to better withstand future weather. A similar assessment and improved rebuild process will likely be needed here for the commercial tower that fell if the economics support it.
For a site that serves as a critical node in the region’s wildfire detection network, amateur radio infrastructure, scientific instrumentation, and commercial communications, the loss of even one tower could have cascading effects. The coming weeks will tell us more about the extent of the damage, any additional as-yet uniscovered damage on other towers, and the timeline for restoration.
If you have additional information about this event, particularly regarding which services are affected or the path forward for restoration, please contact us at ORI. Newsletter signup here: https://www.openresearch.institute/newsletter-subscription/
Photo Credits and Sources
Damage photos: Chris Baldwin, via CORA (Cactus Open Repeater Association) members.
HPWREN before/after camera images: HPWREN Monument Peak FFOV Color E 90° camera, UC San Diego / San Diego Supercomputer Center. HPWREN is funded by the National Science Foundation (Grant Numbers 0087344, 0426879, and 0944131). http://hpwren.ucsd.edu
Tip on HPWREN imagery: Steve Hansen, W6QX.
Storm data: National Weather Service San Diego (NWS SGX); NBC 7 San Diego; San Diego Union-Tribune; KOGO Newsradio 600; ABC 10News San Diego.
Site information: American Tower Corporation; MRA-Raycom (mra-raycom.com); NASA Space Geodesy Project (space-geodesy.nasa.gov); ECRA (ecra-sd.com); RepeaterBook; N6ACE repeater listings.