Outages in Sierra Nevada foothills improve as power around Sacramento restored
Update:
As of 6 p.m. Wednesday, power remained out for roughly 3,500 customers of PG&E, mostly along the Sierra Nevada foothills, down from nearly 13,000 homes and businesses that were in the dark as storms dumped snow on trees and power lines.
The largest of the remaining outages, according to PG&E’s outage page, are in Forest Meadows, Calaveras County, where 1,000 homes are in the dark. Other areas with 300 or fewer customers without power include: Alleghany, Buckhorn, Challenge-Brownsville, Grass Valley, Mokelumne Hill, Pike, Pioneer, Red Corral, Somerset, Volcano and West Point.
The largest of the outages Wednesday was in Pollack Pines, where about 5,000 homes and businesses were interrupted around 8 a.m. Power was restored before 5 p.m., the utility reported.
Power remained on for SMUD customers in Sacramento County throughout the day Wednesday. Fewer than 500 customers lost power through the day, the utility’s outage page reported, a night after crews scrambled to reconnect more than 20,000 homes and businesses that had lost electricity at the height of Tuesday’s gusty winds.
Original story:
As many as 50,000 homes and businesses in the Sacramento region were in the dark Tuesday night as a brutal storm brought rain and wind across Northern California, downing power lines and causing other electrical problems, the area’s two major utilities said.
By 8 a.m. Wednesday, the majority of customers in the Sacramento Valley had been restored — fewer than 100 SMUD customers were still in the dark. About 12,000 customers of Pacific Gas and Electric in the Sierra Nevada foothills, however, lost power as snow ramped up along the western slopes.
The largest and most persistent of the Sacramento Municipal Utility District outages was in the Arden Arcade and Carmichael areas. More than 12,000 homes and businesses lost power at 5:33 p.m. Tuesday, according to SMUD’s outage page. The utility said on its website that it was a tree-related outage, but a spokeswoman for SMUD could not provide further details Wednesday morning.
By 7 p.m., many customers were restored, though another outage in the same area struck at 8:22 p.m. The lights returned for the majority of customers before 11 p.m. At 4 a.m. Wednesday, however, SMUD briefly reported roughly the same number of customers without power in the same area, though the outage numbers were revised again before 4:30 a.m. to show no outages in the area.
Outages around Sacramento
About 5,000 customers in the Land Park, Hollywood Park and South Land Park areas were also without power for more than an hour after outages occurred around 6:30 p.m. Another 5,000 homes lost power in the Wilton and Herald areas from an outage at was reported just before 7 p.m. Most areas of southern Sacramento County are back on the grid, SMUD reported.
The utility warned customers via social media that intense storms blanketing the Sacramento Valley ahead of the Thanksgiving holiday could lead to outages in the area.
FIre dispatch officials reported more than three dozen instances of power lines down across metropolitan Sacramento. Areas where wires fell included the Tahoe Park and Meadowview sections of Sacramento, Citrus Heights, Courtland, Elk Grove, Elverta, Fair Oaks, Hood, North Highlands, Orangevale and Rancho Cordova.
On Monday, power was knocked out to about 16,000 customers in south Sacramento just after 9 a.m. due to wind blowing debris into a power line. Officials said power was restored around 11 a.m.
PG&E customers affected
Meanwhile, customers of Pacific Gas and Electric Co. who ring SMUD territory also faced outages as the winter storm brought several inches of snow to the Sierra foothills.
On Wednesday afternoon, about 13,000 customers in several places were without power including Alleghany, Auburn, Camino, Foresthill, Grass Valley, Lake of the Pines, Nevada City, Placerville, Pollock Pines and Shingle Springs.
On Tuesday night, roughly 13,000 of PG&E’s customers in parts of Yolo, Placer, El Dorado, San Joaquin, Solano, Yuba and Sutter counties lost power, the utility said, most were restored by 9 p.m. However, lingering outages were reported in Winters, Yuba City and Fairfield.
The largest outage Tuesday was in Davis, where more than 3,000 homes and businesses are without power after an outage struck at 6:12 p.m., the company’s outage page said. Power was restored around 7:30 p.m.
The winter weather came with full force ahead of the busy Thanksgiving travel period, bringing what meteorologists call a “bombogenesis” with it.
Communities in the Valley are expected to be pounded with wind and rain through the Thanksgiving holiday as a “powerful winter-like storm moves into the region,” the National Weather Service said. By Wednesday morning, rain and wind had ceased in most of the Sacramento area.
This story was originally published November 26, 2019 at 6:07 PM.
