California’s Rare Winter Blackout Expands as Fire Threat Grows

(Bloomberg) -- Utilities in California have cut power to nearly 30,000 homes and businesses to prevent live wires from sparking wildfires as high winds and usually warm temperatures leave the drought-weary state a potential tinderbox.

Edison International’s Southern California Edison has shut off nearly 25,000 customers as gusts of up to 55 miles (88 kilometers) per hour batter the region and the high reaches 69 degrees Fahrenheit (21 Celsius). PG&E Corp. has switched off about 5,000 customers in the southern part of the state’s Central Valley and Sierra Nevada foothills.

Such power cuts are extremely rare in the winter, and utilities have never warned of a possible shutoff of this size in January. The shutoffs underscore how wild California’s weather has become as climate change brings about increasingly extreme warmth and drought. Last year, record temperatures took down large swaths of the state’s power grid and wildfires torched more acreage than ever before.

Read more: California’s Climate Tinderbox: A Scientist on the Fire Crisis

During a regular winter, public safety power shutoffs “would not be under consideration, but this winter has been anything but normal,” PG&E meteorologists said on the utility’s website. Only 22% of the average rainfall this winter has been in the southern Sierra, they said.

High winds, along with low humidity that has dried brush and grasses making them easier to burn, will create critical conditions Tuesday, the U.S. Storm Prediction Center said in a forecast.

“Recent fuel sampling indicates that the vegetation is still unseasonably dry and ripe for larger wildfires during windy periods,” Edison’s spokesman Reggie Kumar said by phone. “The last two months of 2020 were part of the worst fire season that California has seen, with near-record levels of dryness in November and December.”

A storm system will near Southern California later this week and could bring cooler temperatures, though the region probably won’t get any rain from, said Bryan Jackson, a forecaster with the U.S. Weather Prediction Center. On Sunday, California saw temperatures rise to the 70s Fahrenheit in the central part of the state, setting records for the day in San Francisco, and into the 80s to the south, the National Weather Service said.

While the winter months usually mark California’s rainy season, much of the state remains gripped by drought conditions, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor