(Reuters) - Early on Monday, over 600,000 residences and businesses in California remained without power, as reported by PowerOutage.us. The persistent power outage resulted from an atmospheric river storm that brought heavy rainfall and hurricane-force winds to the state.
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| © Reuters. FILE PHOTO: Workers clear an area of a fallen tree as a Pacific storm known as an "Atmospheric River" approaches northern California, bringing heavy rains and winds that could trigger widespread flooding, in downtown San Francisco, California, U.S., Febru |
This storm, identified as the second Pineapple Express weather system within a week, coincided with the Grammy Awards in Los Angeles, attracting celebrities to the city.
Pacific Gas and Electric Co (PG&E), a unit of California energy company PG&E Corp, experienced the highest number of outages, affecting over 500,000 customers. PG&E reported restoring power to more than 565,000 customers within the past 24 hours but indicated that around 570,000 customers were still without power.
Governor Gavin Newsom declared a state of emergency in eight counties with a collective population exceeding 20 million. Flash flood warnings were issued for areas in Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, and San Luis Obispo counties.
The U.S. National Weather Service's Los Angeles office revealed that LA witnessed its third wettest February day since 1877 on Sunday, posing a high risk of life-threatening and damaging flooding until Tuesday afternoon.
In response to the challenging conditions, base power prices in California's SP-15 hub surged, reaching as high as $63.35 per megawatt-hour (MWh) for the 18th hour on Monday.
