This year’s Labor Day Holiday saw record-breaking temperatures around the county. Redwood City broke 107 beating its old record of 97 degrees that was recorded in 1983, according to the National Weather Service website.
California Independent System Operator issued a flex alert for Monday and Tuesday, according to its website. PG&E is asking customers to voluntarily conserve energy from the hours of 4-10 p.m. by not using major appliances such as laundry and air conditioning while using a microwave over electric stoves. The most critical of those hours between 6-8 p.m.
“CAISO calls on the utilities to shed loads to reduce the amount of consumption that didn’t become necessary yesterday [Monday], PG&E and CAISO are very closely monitoring the situation today,” Jason King, a spokesperson for PG&E, said.
PG&E won’t be able to issue warnings if a rolling blackout occurs because of the nature of the event, he said, but will be in contact with its affected customer through phone calls and social media. If a blackout does occur, customers should expect outages in their area to last between 60 and 90 minutes on average.
As of Tuesday at 1:30 p.m. the current capacity of energy is 58,860 MW. In comparison, our peak demand was forecast around 5 p.m. using 52,524 MW, according to the CAISO website.
The ISO did send out an emergency alert around 5:45 p.m. asking Californians to conserve power and saw an immediate and significant drop in energy use, according the state’s Office of Emergency Services.
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The National Weather Service issued a heat advisory in effect until 8 p.m. Tuesday. Temperatures around the county are expected to reach up to 100 or more. With multiple hot days in a heat wave, National Weather Service meteorologist Brooke Bingaman urges county residents to stay cool and hydrated, because heat-related illnesses are sneaky and happen quickly.
“We are in the midst of the peak of this heat event. Yesterday was extremely hot. Many records were broken for several hours this morning from 6 a.m. to now [noon],” Bingaman said. “We are seeing temperatures running anywhere from 2 to 7 degrees warmer than Monday. Because of that, we have high confidence that today will be just as warm as yesterday if not a little bit warmer.”
She said the hot air mass that is sitting over us isn’t going to quickly go away either. On Wednesday it will begin to cool down; however, we won’t see seasonable temperatures in the area again until this weekend.
“The main message for today is for people to make sure they are taking care of themselves, allowing their bodies a chance to cool down in air conditioning, whether that be public places or if you have air conditioning at home,” Bingaman said.
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