Residents of the American River at Discovery Park during a heatwave in Sacramento, California, U.S., on Sunday, September 4, 2022. A record heatwave has made life in much of the West a whirlwind. miserable on Tuesday, with California extending into a second day of extreme heat that has taxed the state’s electricity supply and threatened power shortages that could lead to outages while people try to keep cool. hopeless.
David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | beautiful pictures
A record heatwave made life miserable in much of the West Tuesday, with California extending into a second week of extreme heat that taxed the state’s electricity supply with demand. record high and made it almost order the power outage while everyone desperately tried to stay calm.
The California Independent Systems Operator, which oversees the state’s power grid, has issued a Phase 3 warning that allows it to use emergency power sources. The warning is a step below that actually dictates a rotating outage.
CAISO said peak electricity demand on Tuesday reached 52,061 megawatts, much higher than the previous peak of 50,270 megawatts set on July 24, 2006.
Demand dropped as dusk fell, businesses closed, and CAISO sent out a notice on its mobile app asking customers to cut back on their usage, warning that “maybe power interruption occurs unless you take action”.
Yet even without intentional power outages, tens of thousands of people still find themselves without power in Northern California.
About 35,700 people lost power in the Silicon Valley and southern and inland parts of the San Francisco Bay Area, and most of the outages were heat-related, said Jason King of Pacific Gas & Electric. There is no announcement as to when the power will return.
Earlier in the day, Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom urged people to conserve, warning in a video messages that “the risk of a blackout is real and it happens instantaneously.”
“This heatwave is on track to become the hottest and longest-running heatwave on record for the state and parts of the West in September,” Newsom said. “Everybody has to do their part to help raise the bar in just a few days.”
California’s Department of Cannabis Control has urged cannabis businesses to turn off lights and power or use backup generators.
California’s state capital Sacramento hit an all-time high Tuesday of 116 degrees Fahrenheit (46.7 degrees Celsius), breaking the previous record of 114 degrees Fahrenheit set in July 1925, according to the Service. National Weather.
Debbie Chang, a native of Sacramento, took a walk in Capitol Park Tuesday morning, pulling a Pop-Tarts and water to distribute to the homeless. She lives in an old house that relies on wall-mounted appliances that she says don’t work well. The temperature reached 91 degrees (33 C) in her home on Monday night.
“The last couple of years in California, it’s been really tough,” she said. “I really love this state. And growing up, I never imagined that I would exactly want to live outside of California, unless maybe internationally. But this is very difficult.”
In the San Francisco Bay Area, temperatures have tightened or broken all-time highs in half a dozen cities. In Los Angeles, temperatures hit the 90s on Tuesday, prompting the nation’s second-largest school district to restrict its use of concrete and plastic playgrounds.
In neighboring Nevada, Reno’s 106 F (41 C) on Tuesday was the hottest day ever recorded in September and broke the previous record for that day, 96 F (35.5 C) in 1944. It came within 2 degrees of the all-time high for any day or month of 108 F (42 C), set in July 2002 and equal in July 2007, according to the National Weather Service .
In Utah’s Salt Lake City – a city at more than 4,000 feet (1,219 meters) – temperatures were about 20 degrees above normal, hitting 105 F (40.5 C) on Tuesday, the hottest day of the month. 9 is recorded as far back as 1874.
Climate change has made the West warmer and drier over the past three decades, scientists say, and will continue to make more extreme weather and more frequent and destructive wildfires. Over the past five years, California has experienced the largest and most destructive wildfires in state history.
A wildfire that started Friday in the Weed community in Northern California has killed two people, and an outbreak Monday and rapidly spreading in the Hemet area of Southern California has also killed two. Authorities said they were found in the same area and appear to have died while trying to flee the blaze.
Although the heatwave is likely to peak in most places on Tuesday, the extreme heat is expected to continue for several more days.
“This is a really dangerous event from a human health perspective,” said Daniel Swain, a climate scientist with the Institute for Environment and Sustainability at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Sacramento County officials have been using the air-conditioned hallways of some of their public buildings as cooling hubs for people with nowhere else to go and providing free transportation for those can’t get there. Officials are even handing out vouchers to some homeless people through a program they usually book for the winter, according to county spokeswoman Janna Haynes.
“While a lot of people can stay at home, a lot of people don’t have a home to live in,” says Haynes.
In government office buildings, thermostats are set at 85 degrees (29 C) at 5 p.m. to save electricity.
Ariana Clark, a Sacramento native, said she can’t remember how long it’s been this hot. She said she turned off the air conditioning in the afternoons to save energy and keep her 9-month-old son, Benito, cool by filling a bucket for him to play outside.
“As long as he stays calm that’s what matters,” Clark said.
Juliana Hinch, who moved to Sacramento from San Diego two and a half years ago, said she has never felt this hot before. She said some wetlands near her home have dried up, so she leaves water in the front yard “for other random animals,” including cats, squirrels and coyotes.
Hinch said she used to live in Washington state but moved elsewhere because it was too cold. Now, she says, “that sounds like a good deal to have.”
