Bay Area braces for more wild weather, blackouts
Lightning could strike thousands more times and cause more wildfires
Bay Area residents were braced for another round of lightning strikes, possible power outages and wildfires across the region overnight after a wild series of thunderstorms rattled people across Northern California.
The National Weather Service extended its red flag warning for the entire Bay Area to 11 a.m. today, warning that a new series of thunderstorms and lightning strikes would likely cause more fires. PG&E said in a statement Sunday evening that it was “likely” that state officials would again instruct it to cut off service to some customers before the night was through.
“We do think there’s going to be another round of lightning activity over the Bay Area similar to last night,” National Weather Service meteorologist Anna Schneider said Sunday evening. The systems would start in Monterey, she said, and drift northward, lasting into this morning.
“It may be a little wetter this time around, but it’ll be moving quickly and wouldn’t be helpful in putting out any ignitions from lightning strikes.”
Drivers hitting the highways for commutes or travel should see a repeat of the erratic and gusty winds that could make for difficult driving along bridges, hilly passes and elevated terrain.
The heat event also remains in effect, with
inland cities like Livermore getting a decent chance at meeting or beating its record of 106 set in 1939.
“It’s forecast at 104 or 105,” Schneider said, “so it’ll be close. It’ll depend on what time the clouds clear out and the heating ramps up.”
Days of hot weather already had firefighters on alert as clouds moved in early Sunday, developing off the Central Coast and bringing dry lightning over parched vegetation. The storms began building over Santa Cruz shortly before 3 a.m. Sunday and moved north across the region over the next few hours, with dramatic lightning displays and brief downpours of rain through midmorning.
NWS meteorologist Steve Anderson said there were about 2,500 lightning strikes recorded during Sunday’s storm. He added that the overnight period into this morning would be a “carbon copy repeat” of the previous night’s storms, potentially causing more fires.
“It’s very unusual to have this kind of lightning activity,” Anderson said. “Thunderstorms usually roll through here in a matter of hours, but this has been going on for hours with another round to come. We haven’t seen lightning storms like this since 2008.”
The heat was shaping up to possibly force another series of rolling blackouts late Sunday as the state approached its electrical grid capacity.
About 220,000 PG&E customers had power cut off as use surged on Saturday. Tens of thousands more suffered unplanned outages, with fewer than 40,000 awaiting restoration of service by Sunday afternoon, according to PG&E spokesman J.D. Guidi.
“A majority of outages are related to the lightning that came through in the early morning hours,” Guidi said. “There have been additional outages related to heat and other causes, but the majority are related to (the) severe weather that came through (Sunday) morning.”
Grid managers issued a warning just before noon Sunday that the state’s power system might fall short of capacity later in the afternoon and evening, as temperatures were expected to peak. Officials later issued a flex alert set to last through Wednesday, asking residents to try to reduce power use from 3 p.m. to 10 p.m. to avoid further outages.
At least one cooling center in San Jose was forced to shut down Sunday afternoon after it lost power.
Firefighters from the South, North and East Bays battled several vegetation fires Sunday morning, including two clusters of fires that grew together in the East Bay and South Bay.
By early Sunday evening, vegetation fires several miles northeast of Milpitas in Santa Clara County had consumed 585 acres from a 5-acre fire near Oakridge and Arroyo Hondo roads and a 10-acre blaze southwest of the first fire. The fires, dubbed the Marsh Fire, had initially grown to 120 acres by 1:20 p.m.
There were no reports of evacuations or threatened structures.
The River Fire, south of Salinas in Monterey County, had burned 300 acres and was 10% contained as of 5 p.m., CalFire officials said. Thirty structures were threatened, and evacuations were advised but not ordered Sunday evening along Mt. Toro Access Road and San Benancio Road. Four firefighters suffered heat injuries while fighting the blaze.
In Brentwood, a group of small blazes spread into what fire officials were calling the Deer Complex Fire, which had grown to about 325 acres by Sunday afternoon. Officials warned residents on Morgan Territory Road in Danville to prepare for evacuation, but there was no order.
In Livermore, the Arroyo Fire started just after 5 a.m. and quickly grew to 50 acres before Livermore Pleasanton and Alameda County firefighters stopped forward progress of the fire around 8 a.m. Officials said they were responding to multiple smaller vegetation fires around the TriValley area.
In the Baton Rouge neighborhood of San Jose, a lightning strike ignited an six-unit apartment building, bringing crews to battle a two-alarm fire on Oropeza
Court. One unit was destroyed, displacing one person, but no injuries were reported.
In Santa Clara County, firefighters had to stop fighting a small blaze and seek shelter in the Redwood Estates area of Los Gatos around 4 a.m. when a thunderstorm cell passed directly overhead. No one was reported injured and the fire was contained around 6 a.m.
Air quality-regulators warned that the Bay Area could be harmed by smoke from the wildfires. Bay Area air reports Sunday showed moderate levels of pollution in the coast and central Bay, East Bay and Santa Clara Valley and unhealthy levels of pollutants for sensitive people in the area around Palo Alto and most of the North Bay.
Meteorologist Anderson said the thunderstorm activity was coming from Tropical Storm Fausto off the coast of Baja California. Schneider added that hundredths of an inch of rain fell across the Bay Area, with most of the rain falling in the hills above Los Altos and the Mid-Peninsula, near Mt. Diablo and the San Ramon area as well as Mount Tamalpais, where 0.16 inches of rain fell.
A couple of spots above the East Bay got about a quarter inch of rain, Schneider said.
After the storms pass, the forecast calls for sunny and hot weather later today, with highs in the mid90s in San Jose and near 90 in Oakland; the area between Concord and Livermore will be the “bullseye for heat,” Anderson said, with daytime high temperatures in the mid-100s today and Tuesday.
Record-breaking temperatures are possible throughout the week as the highpressure system concentrated across the Mountain West remains in place.
“It’s hard to imagine normal temperatures ever again, but temperatures will come back down after Thursday,” Anderson said.