Officials preparing for heavy rain to hit parts of the Central Valley
Nov 24, 2024
FRESNO, Calif. (KSEE/KGPE) - Rain and heavy winds swept across the San Joaquin Valley over the weekend.
David Spector with the National Weather Service in Hanford said the storm brought extensive rain to parts of Fresno.
“This is the biggest storm we've had to really impact our area, it looks like since March of 2023," Spector explained. "It's been pulling up surges of deep moisture and spreading them into California. We had one surge that was like an atmospheric river that came in Friday night and Saturday. It didn't hit us as hard. We still had some significant rainfall, especially from about Fresno northward."
Jeff Smith with PG&E said that crews responded to intermittent outages over the weekend.
“We're still continuing to monitor with some rain expected to continue on through this week," he noted.
He said the company plans ahead for big weather events, to make sure crews are prepared and ready to restore power as quickly as possible.
"Sometimes that involves putting them on a rest period so that when the weather comes in later in the week, crews can work extended hours if need be. Often, you know, 24, 36 hours straight to respond to, you know, whatever outages may occur as a result of the of the winter weather," Smith explained.
According to Spector, more wet weather is expected to arrive early Monday. He said it is already causing some unease among local governments.
He said, “The emergency managers are really concerned about potential flooding and evacuations. They remembered what happened two years ago. We had a very active winter that year and we had several storms that produced very heavy precipitation, and we had widespread flooding from some of these storms, especially the warmer ones. And this is a warmer storm.”