(Bloomberg) -- California residents face power shutoffs this week as warm, dry winds sweep the state, threatening to tear down utility lines and spark wildfires.
Edison International’s southern California utility has already cut power to a handful of customers in Los Angeles County, according to its website, and the company is mulling shutoffs for more than 170,000 homes and businesses across the region. Meanwhile, roughly 15,500 PG&E Corp. customer accounts in 18 Northern California counties could lose electricity Tuesday evening through Thursday, a company spokesman said.
Winds will begin to pick up Tuesday, when many voters will head to the polls for the US presidential election. Gusts around 50 miles (80 kilometers) per hour are possible in some areas, while temperatures could rise to 70F (21C) or more, the National Weather Service said.
“The warmth combined with the wind is what is going to cause the fire danger to get really high,” said Ashton Robinson Cook, a forecaster at the US Weather Prediction Center.
PG&E spokesman Jeff Smith said only two polling places in its territory could lose power Tuesday, and in both cases, the potential outages would start after polls close at 8 pm. An Edison spokesman said no outages in the company’s territory are planned to begin on Tuesday. Instead, the utility is considering switching off power Monday, Wednesday and Thursday.
There is plenty of natural fuel to spark blazes in California after two winters of abundant rain allowed grasses and brush to thrive. Those plants have now withered following a hot summer. The wind gusts, typical of this time of year, would lead to “rapid fire growth,” the weather service said.
So far in 2024, more than 1 million acres have burned across California, which is more than last year but less than the five-year average of nearly 1.3 million, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, commonly called Cal Fire. This year’s Park Fire in July was the state’s fourth-largest blaze in history.
High pressure to the north and east of California is creating a conveyor belt of wind that rushes south and west toward the Pacific. The winds — sometimes called sundowners, Diablos or Santa Anas — dry out and heat up as they cross inland mountains.
“It is a classic pattern,” Robinson Cook said.
--With assistance from Lauren Rosenthal.
(Adds Southern California Edison outages in first and second paragraphs, details on polling places in paragraph five.)
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