More Than 10K Homes, Businesses in PG&E’s Fresno Division Lose Power

High winds and steady rain are causing Fresno area trees to fall and cut out electricity, PG&E officials said Tuesday afternoon.

Here is a simulated radar loop from 2:00pm to 12:00am tonight. Expect more rain and gusty winds with this system. pic.twitter.com/w35BwVivwU

— NWS Hanford (@NWSHanford) March 21, 2023

As of 1 p.m. Tuesday, the utility company reported that 10,053 customers were without power in its Fresno division. The division covers Fresno County, most of Kings County, and parts of Tulare County.

Another 7,581 customers in the Yosemite division were experiencing outages. That division includes Madera, Merced, Stanislaus, Tuolumne, and Mariposa counties.

PG&E customers can check on the estimated time for restoration of service at this link.

Unbelievable satellite imagery of one of the most intense March cyclones on record for California with the eye of the storm making landfall near San Francisco.

Amazing. pic.twitter.com/nW4cmNmiSL

— Colin McCarthy (@US_Stormwatch) March 21, 2023

Second-Most Snow in California History

This season is the second snowiest in the 77 years of record-keeping at the Central Sierra Snow Lab — more than 56.4 feet with no end in sight.

With 7.7″ (19.5 cm) of #snow over the last day, ’22/’23 has passed ’82/’83 as the 2nd snowiest season (Oct 1 – Sept 30) since the CSSL was built in 1946! We now have a season total of 677″ (56.4 feet, 17.2 m).

Still far from #1 but we’ll get closer over the next week. #CAwx pic.twitter.com/M0thTCxZuI

— UC Berkeley Central Sierra Snow Lab (@UCB_CSSL) March 20, 2023

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And, there’s still a chance it could surpass the record of 67.7 feet set in 1951-52 when more than 200 passengers on a San Francisco-bound luxury train from Chicago were stranded for three days near Donner Pass west of Truckee.

Over the weekend, the “winter that just doesn’t want to end” as the National Weather Service in Reno put it, topped the previous No. 2 record of 55.9 feet set in 1982-83. That was the second of back-to-back blizzard buster seasons remembered most for an avalanche that killed seven at a Tahoe ski resort on March 31, 1982.

The official record-book keeper is UC-Berkeley’s Central Sierra Snow Lab, founded in 1946 in Soda Springs, northwest of Lake Tahoe.

“We’ve seen bigger storms in other years and years with higher snow water equivalent totals … but the relentlessness of this season is likely what makes it most unique,” said Andrew Schwartz, the lab’s manager and lead scientist.

Working inside a nearly 18-foot-deep snow pit at the UC Berkeley Central Sierra Snow Lab, from left, Shaun Joseph, Claudia Norman, and Helena Middleton take measurements of snow temperatures ahead of a weather storm on March 9, 2023, in Soda Spring. The more than 55 feet of snow that a dozen storms have dumped on the mountains along the Nevada-California line this season has etched its way into the history books as the second snowiest on record at the Central Sierra Snow Lab. (Karl Mondon/Bay Area News Group via AP)

(Associated Press contributed to this report.)