Thousands restored power near Truckee as atmospheric river arrives in Northern California
TRUCKEE – Thousands were without power near Truckee as an atmospheric river arrived in Northern California on Wednesday, dumping rain and snow.
Sometime around 10 a.m., more than 7,700 customers of the Truckee Donner Public Utility District lost power near Donner Lake and Tahoe Donner due to the winter storm that had just arrived.
The utility warned customers that crews may be delayed in resolving the transmission outage as they worked on a Public Safety Outage Management event in northern Nevada.
The PSOM was called for the Verdi area, just east of Reno near the California border, to prevent power lines or other equipment from causing a wildfire.
Despite the rain and snow arriving in Northern California, NV Energy had its system in a wildfire safety mode due to dry fuels, low humidity and winds reaching up to about 60 mph in western Nevada.
Rain wasn't expected to reach Verdi until Wednesday afternoon, leaving a window for a wildfire to start.
Crews with TDPUD and NV Energy then had to patrol all of its systems to make sure there was no damage before turning the power back on. However, due to the remote area of the power lines and incoming weather, the utility worried about crews being delayed in patrolling power lines until the weather eased and allowed them to fly a helicopter.
The TDPUD website said it was warning customers its outage may last more than a day as crews respond to the PSOM event, delaying them from resolving the transmission outages near Truckee.
But shortly before 12:45 p.m., NV Energy restored its transmission lines, allowing for power to be restored to all TDPUD customers in the Tahoe Donner and Donner Lake areas by about 1:15 p.m., according to TDPUD.
NV Energy still had power shut off to areas like Carson/Genoa, Galena, southwest Reno, VC Highlands and Washoe Valley as of Wednesday afternoon.
TDPUD says since it can't generate power in Truckee, it relies on electricity to come from NV Energy transmission lines that cross through the Verdi area. Therefore, if NV Energy de-energizes its transmission line, TDPUD will lose its access to electricity.
