High winds cause 177k customers in Sacramento County to lose power. Here’s when gusts will peak
High winds and stormy weather on Sunday caused more than 177,000 Sacramento County customers to lose power, with the strongest gusts set to hit the region overnight.
At the height of the afternoon outages, 177,697 homes and businesses lost power in Sacramento County, according to the Sacramento Municipal Utility District.
There were more than 8,100 outages in Yolo County, mostly in West Sacramento, according to PG&E. More than 4,100 customers lost power in Placer County, mostly in Rocklin and unincorporated areas.
There were 470 customers affected by outages in El Dorado County. More than 240 Roseville Electric Utility customers also lost power.
Sacramento Regional Transit on Sunday afternoon temporarily suspended light rail service due to high winds, power outages and debris on tracks.
“We are getting people out there as quickly and safely as possible,” said Johnna Phillips, a SMUD spokeswoman, said of utility crews.
Phillips said SMUD had been preparing for the weekend storm event for days, and repair crews and customer service workers were at the ready to help affected customers. Those with downed lines should avoid them and call 911, she said.
Storms hit Sacramento region
At 2:15 p.m., McClellan Airport near North Highlands recorded a gust of 59 mph with sustained winds of 43 mph. Mather Field near Rancho Cordova saw a 61-mph gust under sustained winds of 41 mph just before 1 p.m., meteorologists said. Gusts close to 50 mph were seen in Folsom, Roseville and Lincoln as well.
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The city saw nearly an inch of rain, according to the National Weather Service office in Sacramento: 0.95 inches fell downtown over 24 hours by 3 p.m., 0.88 fell at Executive Airport, and International Airport had received 1.38 inches. Precipitation totals were half an inch to three-quarters of an inch in the county’s eastern suburbs and the foothills of Placer and El Dorado counties through 3 p.m., the weather service recorded.
At Sacramento International Airport, 41 flights had been canceled by the winds, according to flight tracking service FlightAware. Of those cancellations, 37 of them were Southwest flights. FlightAware said by 4:45 p.m., 85 flights had experienced delays coming into or out of the airport.
San Francisco International, meanwhile, had nearly 150 cancellations and over 300 delays, FlightAware said, after the FAA issued a temporary ground stop for high winds. Flights resumed just after 4:30 p.m., according to the FAA’s advisory, which said the average delay for a domestic flight Sunday at SFO was nearly five hours.
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The strongest gusts Sunday swept through areas south of I-80, said Kate Forrest, a National Weather Service meteorologist in the Sacramento office. Overnight, gusting winds will begin to extend into the central and northern parts of the Sacramento Valley, Forrest said, before beginning to weaken on Monday afternoon.
The strongest gusts will hit the eastern part of the Sacramento Valley overnight into Monday, she said.
Forrest expects showers and isolated thunderstorms to bring half an inch to 1.5 inches of rain in the Sacramento region from Sunday afternoon through Tuesday.
The Bee’s Daniel Hunt contributed to this story.
