Series of storms expected to bring a White Christmas to much of Northern and Central California

Santa’s Sleigh won’t be the only blip seen on California radars this week. Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) meteorologists are forecasting that a series of moderately strong storm systems that began to arrive in northern areas Tuesday will produce strong winds, steady rainfall, low elevation snow and potential widespread power outages for the next week.

In advance of the storm, PG&E is confirming the availability of crew resources during the holiday weeks, shifting planned maintenance work until after the storm window closes, and hunkering down for a long winter’s work period of holiday power restoration.

“We know how much our customers depend on us to keep the lights and the heat on, especially during the holidays. As we’ve studied this developing weather pattern over the past several days, we’ve activated our winter storm response plans so that we can be ready when our customers need us,” said Wade Smith, PG&E’S Senior Vice President, Electric Operations.

PG&E meteorologists, along with experts from the National Weather Service, are calling for light to moderate rain and breezy to gusty winds from the first weather system which arrived in the Humboldt area Wednesday and began moving south Wednesday night.

A second and colder weather system is expected to arrive Friday into Saturday with widespread rain, lowering snow levels and gusty winds Wind gusts of 30 to 45 mph are possible with the passage of this system with snow levels down to around 2,000 feet in some areas.

Winter storms produce wet and windy conditions that can cause trees, limbs and other debris to fall into power lines, damage equipment and interrupt electric service.

In some areas, ground already saturated by previous storms, along with drought-intensified conditions that weakened vegetation, could cause more trees to fall into our equipment and cause power outages.

PG&E’S meteorology team has developed a Storm Outage Prediction Model that incorporates real-time weather forecasts, historical data and system knowledge to accurately show where and when storm impacts will be most severe. This model enables the company to pre-stage crews and equipment as storms approach to enable rapid response to outages. Those activities are taking place now.

Workers are prepared to tackle restoration in challenging weather conditions and are supported by the utility’s geosciences team.