Hundreds of thousands of people lost power in dozens of California counties on Sunday as weather forecasters forecast the strongest winds of the year and the possibility of more ferocious wildfires, officials said.
Pacific Gas and Electric, which supplies electricity to millions of people in Northern and Central California, cut off power to 225,000 customers as of Sunday night, said Mark Quinley, the utility’s event commander. He said another 136,000 people were expected to lose power by midnight.
The outage is expected to hit 36 counties, he said.
The company, which has been blamed for one of the state’s worst wildfires this year, has worked to shut down its electrical grid to prevent its appliances from spoiling the new fire.
“Unfortunately, this is changing as predicted,” the company’s meteorologist Scott Strenfell told reporters Sunday night.
Earlier, forecasters with the National Weather Service said the strongest winds of the year were forecast in some areas of the state by Monday. With low humidity and tinder-dry vegetation, the agency placed much of Northern California under its highest-risk wildfire warning, the Red Flag Warning.
In some areas the wind could reach a peak of 70 miles per hour, Strenfell said.
Daniel Swain, UCLA Environmental Scientist, Said“This fire is a weather forecast that I hope will not be fulfilled in 2020, given all that has already aired.”
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Thousands of blazes have hit more than 4 million acres in California this year, including the largest forest fire in state history, topping over 1 million acres and spread across six counties. Thirty-one people have been killed, and more than 9,000 buildings have collapsed.
Forecasters were also forecasting strong winds and low humidity in Southern California. A utility in the area, Southern California Addis, said it has been considering power shutdowns for 71,000 customers since Monday, according to an Associated Press report.
Officials and experts have blamed the state’s record-breaking fire season on climate change and decades of forest management practices that allowed the creation of dead and dried vegetation in vast forest areas of the state.
