Over 200,000 Californians remain without power from atmospheric river event

Over 200,000 Californians are still without power due to damage sustained from an atmospheric river that has struck Northern and Central California.

The atmospheric river, described as “rivers in the sky” by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, hit Californians on Sunday, February 4, at a point causing outages for more than 850,000 customers, according to the New York Times.

In a release, California’s biggest utility, Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E), said they had already restored power to approximately 1 million customers since Monday, February 5, although they expect to restore most accessible outages by end-of-day Thursday.

According to PG&E, when the storm hit on Sunday, more than 40 million people across the state were under high wind alerts.

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On Friday, February 2nd, PG&E said they had been preparing for the storm as Californians were “still drying out from rains earlier this week”, staging crews in the areas expected to receive the worst.

However, atmospheric pressure gradients, which create strong winds, were among the strongest meteorologists have seen in nearly 30 years. The winds, which at a point reached 100mph (161kmh), caused damage to trees and electric infrastructure, leading to other debris contacting electric equipment and lines.

In terms of total outages, PG&E says this was one of the top three most damaging, single-day storms on record, comparable to storms in 1995 and 2008.

In response, PG&E has deployed over 3,000 workers to assess the damage and work on repairs and restoration, although hazardous conditions, such as downed trees, damaged and impassable roads, mudslides or land integrity issues have posed significant safety risks, delaying restoration efforts.

According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in the US, atmospheric rivers are narrow regions in the atmosphere that transport much of the moisture from the tropics to northern latitudes.

Although they occur globally, research from the US Geological Survey shows an increasing pattern of their occurrence along the West coast of the US, with climate change driving more volatile precipitation for California.