About 4K utilities customers lose power as strong winds pass through Palo Alto - Palo Alto Online

Thousands of utilities customers lose power as strong winds pass through Palo Alto, taking down large trees | News | Palo Alto Online |

Powerful winds have returned to Palo Alto, knocking out electricity for around 4,000 utilities customers on Tuesday afternoon, a majority of whom had service back that evening, according to the city's Utilities Department.

Utilities crews have been sent out to address the outages. The city's outage map showed 2,080 utilities customers in the 94301 ZIP code, which covers the northern end of the city, saw their power go out at 1:17 p.m.

At around 1:30 p.m., there was a report of wires down in the 100 block of Emerson Street near Palo Alto Avenue, which falls under the 94301 ZIP code, emergency crews said through radio dispatch reports. Firefighters were on scene for about 10 minutes, according to PulsePoint, an app that display emergency calls.

Another large outage was reported in the central to southern end of the city, west of Middlefield Road, where about 1,800 customers lost power at 1:20 p.m.

Wires were also reportedly down in the 3700 block of Louis Road near East Meadow Drive around 1:30 p.m., according to emergency radio dispatch reports. A large tree also came down in the area.

Other, small-scale outages have been reported across the city, with some affecting about a few dozen customers. There was also an outage that left 445 customers without power in the 94303 ZIP code starting at 1:43 p.m., the city's outage map shows.

As of about 2:20 p.m., traffic lights went black at Churchill Avenue and El Camino Real, as well as Greer Road and Oregon Expressway, emergency dispatchers said.

Shortly before 4 p.m., power was back for about 2,000 utilities customers in the southern end of the city, according to the Utilities Department. As of 4:33 p.m., roughly 1,810 customers remained without service. By 7:20 p.m., the number of customers without power dropped down to 749.

Neighboring cities have also been hit by power outages. As of around 2:30 p.m., 3,581 PG&E customers in East Palo Alto were without power. Out of that total, 2,245 customers were in the neighborhoods east of East Bayshore Road to the bay, as well as some neighborhoods south of University Avenue and West Bayshore Road, where power went out at 1:05 p.m. The remaining 1,336 customers were in the area of East Bayshore Road, east of Bay Road to Willow Road, and in neighborhoods east of Bay Road, where they lost power at 1:21 p.m. PG&E estimates power will be restored at 9:24 p.m.

Downed wires led the following roads to be closed in East Palo Alto: eastbound University Avenue roughly between Notre Dame Avenue and the Dumbarton Bridge, as well as Cooley Avenue at Donohoe Street.

Outages across Stanford led the university to cancel final exams scheduled for the rest of the day on Tuesday, The Stanford Daily tweeted just before 5:30 p.m.

The fierce winds from Tuesday's atmospheric river put thousands of Menlo Park, Woodside, Portola Valley and Atherton residents in the dark. About 3,000 PG&E customers lost power in Mountain View as of early Tuesday afternoon.

In Ladera, a man died when a tree came down on his van during steady rain and winds on Tuesday afternoon, according to the California Highway Patrol. He was traveling east on Alpine Road near La Cuesta Road when high winds knocked down a large tree that fell on his car, CHP Officer David LaRock said.

The gusty and stormy conditions have also impacted local transit. The entrance to the Palo Alto Transit Center was closed due to a tree that came down, according to SamTrans, which warned of delays on routes 280, 281, 296 and ECR as of 2:45 p.m. A detour was set up in the area until about 3:30 p.m., when one lane opened along University Avenue.

A wind advisory is in effect through 9 p.m. Tuesday across the Bay Area, which is expected to see power outages and trees come down, according to the National Weather Service. Winds are estimated to range between 25 mph and 35 mph and gusts are forecasted to climb up to 50 mph.

Bay Area airports have reported flight delays and cancellations Tuesday due to wet and windy weather conditions.

About 300 flights have been delayed and 27 flights have been canceled at San Francisco International Airport. The delays at SFO average about 70 minutes.

Oakland International Airport has reported one canceled arrival and 24 delayed departures over 30 minutes. The airport has no canceled departures.

San Jose Mineta International Airport is experiencing minimal delays along with one canceled arrival and one canceled departure due to weather conditions. The airport has also supported five diversions due to weather at other airports.

The Police Department is aware of the local outages. The agency requested the community not call 911 or nonemergency numbers for the Police and Fire departments to report the outage or ask questions about the service disruption, according to a Nixle alert. Police advised the public to refer to the Utilities Department's Twitter account and electric outage map.

The outages come a week after a strong gusts took down trees, which led to significant power outages that impacted thousands of utilities customers on March 14.

This story will be updated as more information becomes available.