Light rain causes thousands to be without power on Peninsula

Rainfall in populated areas was limited to a couple hundredths of an inch while higher elevations in the county got approximately a tenth of an inch, said National Weather Service meteorologist David King. Stronger rainfall is expected for Tuesday night into Wednesday morning, and again Thursday and over the weekend, he said.

“It’s the first of the rain systems that have moved through as we lead into our wetter season,” said King. “It was a nice little wetting rain that passed through the area.”

Tostado said Monday afternoon said customers in the country should all have service restored by Tuesday. The majority of outages lingering Monday afternoon were in the city of San Mateo, with a few hundred also in South San Francisco. 

“For this storm, we are prepared to move crews from less impacted areas to communities where we could experience more outage activity to allow us to restore power more quickly,” Tostado said by email. “We are also stockpiling electric equipment we may need, including power poles, power lines, transformers and other electric parts, to allow for quicker restoration.”

The remainder of the week’s weather has “the potential to result in power outages,” Tostado said.

Though some wind will also accompany the rain, it should be fairly brief and not as strong as “Diablo winds” which sometimes blow in during fall and cause issues for power infrastructure. 

“In the month of October, generally speaking, we’re still in that time frame of fire season, we typically get offshore winds,” said King. “The good news is, right now in the forecast we are not seeing any type of offshore wind events.”

Some power outages have historically been the result of PG&E shutting off power as a precaution against damaged equipment sparking fires, particularly during the dry season. The utility has in the past been on the hook for billions in liabilities for its role in starting wildfires, including the Camp Fire in 2018, the deadliest wildfire in the state’s history. 

“When you connect the dots between reducing fire concerns when it comes to helping to moisten fuels — I would hope that that may reduce the chances for power outages,” said King, who noted much heavier precipitation Sunday in the North Bay, which will help bring this year’s fire season to a close.

This year and last have been some of the driest in recorded history, and 50 of the state’s counties, including San Mateo County, are still in a drought state of emergency. 

It’s unclear what this year’s expected La Niña climate pattern, which normally means heavy rain in the Pacific Northwest but dry conditions in Southern California, will mean for Northern California, but experts do not expect the season’s rainfall to be adequate for the parched state.

Go to go to pge.com for the latest updates on outages and to view safety tips.

corey@smdailyjournal.com

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