Around-the-clock work by PG&E crews continued throughout the Bay Area and the state early Tuesday, as tens of thousands of residents continued to operate in the dark following an intense weekend storm.
The elements mostly will cooperate with them, according to the National Weather Service.
“It’s going to be better even than it was Monday with the rain,” NWS meteorologist Dalton Behringer said. “We will have the isolated, scattered showers, but it’s going to be really sporadic. Most people will not see rain.”
Related Articles
California storm causes as much as $11 billion in damages
Photos: Bay Area storm topples trees, leaves thousands without power
The vast majority of California flood victims’ losses won’t be covered by insurance
Map: Where wind reached 102 mph, and other peak Bay Area gusts
Bay Area rain chart: Totals from 5 days of atmospheric river storms
Winds also are expected to remain rather calm, 48 hours after they whipped many Bay Area places with 80-plus mph gusts. That is expected to help crews gain momentum in restoring the region’s power.
At 5 a.m. Tuesday, approximately 65,000 PG&E customers still didn’t have power. That figure was down from a peak of more than a million people on Sunday.
The bulk of the customers still in the dark were in the North Bay, where approximately 28,600 people were affected. About 19,300 in the South Bay, 14,600 in the Peninsula, 1,350 in San Francisco and 1,000 in the East Bay were without power.
The utility said they are still assessing damage to its own equipment caused by the storm and that those assessments should be finished Tuesday.
Some of the customers who had their power back Tuesday morning went more than 12 hours without it.
“There’s only so much they can do,” Walnut Creek restaurant owner Debbie Singh said by text after her establishment lost power following the collapse of a power pole on Ygnacio Valley Road between Diablo Road and Marchbanks Drive on Sunday night. “I respect that.”
The rain that fell Tuesday came sporadically but in heavy showers at time. At 6 a.m., San Jose had received nearly a half-inch of rain over the previous 24 hours. About a quarter-inch fell in Oakland and about three-hundredths of an inch in Concord.
Those final isolated showers from the back end of the “atmospheric river” weather system that pounded the Bay Area last week will be replaced Wednesday by rain from a storm system migrating south from the Gulf of Alaska that’s been “hanging off the coast” for a couple days, Behringer said.
“We’re gonna back side of that one,” he said. “Some areas might get a quarter-inch (of rain) at the most. The winds will be breezy at times but nothing like we saw over the weekend.”
The storm cells from that system that reach the Bay Area are expected to move through quickly, according to Behringer. By Thursday, sun is expected to return.
It’s expected to stay a while.
“It looks like the weekend will be pretty nice,” he said. “We’ve got a ridge of high pressure that will start to be building, and it looks like it’s not until the end of the month that we’re gonna get a pattern of active weather again.”
Please check back for updates.
