LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – Pacific Gas and Electric Co. said Wednesday night that hundreds of its crews are continuing their work to restore power following what’s being called one of the strongest winter storms to hit California in years.
The storm battered the state with heavy rain, high winds and snow, including several inches of snow that the National Weather Service reported fell in Lake County.
As of 4 p.m. Wednesday, PG&E said 575,000 of its customers across the state had lost power due to the winds, rain and snow.
Of those, 434,000 – or 75 percent – had power restored with approximately 141,000 customers still out of power as of shortly before 7 p.m., PG&E reported.
The hardest-hit areas with the most remaining outages on Wednesday night included the Sacramento and Stockton regions as well as parts of Humboldt and Mendocino counties.
The company said more than 400 crews and nearly 500 electric troublemen and inspectors are working on restoration.
In some locations, PG&E said its crews have been using snowcats – described as truck-size tracked vehicles – to gain access to infrastructure in locations where snow is the deepest.
In Lake County, 5,822 PG&E customers had been impacted as of 7 a.m. Wednesday, according to company spokeswoman Deanna Contreras.
“With this type of storm that brings prolonged days of rain, several days of high winds and snow in the higher elevations, we do see the outages are caused by trees or tree limbs falling into power lines. In the areas of snow, the snow weighs down trees into the lines,” she said.
The areas with the largest impacts on customers were Clearlake, Cobb, Clearlake Oaks and Kelseyville, Contreras said.
At 8:30 p.m. Wednesday, Contreras told Lake County News that fewer than 1,900 customers remained without power in the county.
“We are working safely and as quickly as possible to restore power to at least 60 of the customers currently impacted in Upper Lake,” where Contreras said there are a total of 244 customers who remain affected by the outage.
PG&E’s in-house meteorologists reported that maximum wind gusts during the storm included 80 mile per hour gusts recorded at weather stations on Mount Diablo in Contra Costa County and Pelato Peak in Kern County.
Wind gusts for Lake County were in the 40s on Tuesday night, based on the company’s wind map.
As this storm is predicted to be the first of a series of storms through this weekend, PG&E reminded its customers to stay safe, be prepared and have an emergency plan.
The latest information on outages and preparedness can be found on PG&E’s website.
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Effort to restore power continues across Lake County, rest of the state in wake of powerful winter storm
- Elizabeth Larson
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