States within the U.S. West are grappling with an unusually heat, arid winter that’s ramping up fireplace danger in some areas, driving utilities to take drastic precautions, together with typically shutting off the ability in a bid to maintain their gear from sparking a doubtlessly ruinous blaze.
Throughout massive pockets of Texas, New Mexico and Colorado, superb grasses and brush that gas fires have dried out as La Niña largely holds vital rain and snow at bay— a sample that’s projected to proceed into the spring. As fireplace climate alerts from the U.S. Nationwide Climate Service loomed in December and January, Xcel Vitality Inc. ordered a number of rounds of preventative energy cuts in Colorado for greater than 50,000 clients, many within the Boulder and Fort Collins areas, reaching into the Rocky Mountains.
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The shutoffs, generally known as “public security energy shutoffs,” are enacted so that in scorching, windy climate, energy strains gained’t inadvertently spark a blaze. These strikes are deeply unpopular, however Xcel says they had been crucial. Behind the scenes, Xcel executives had been heeding recommendation from a crew of climate scientists as they determined the place and when to chop the circulation of energy. It “all begins with meteorology,” says Paul McGregor, the corporate’s vp of wildfire danger administration.
It’s a part of a broader development throughout the utility trade, as firms past California — the place PSPS applications had been pioneered — search to restrict their danger of beginning a lethal fireplace, and with it, their monetary legal responsibility. Interventions like burying strains underground can dramatically cut back fireplace danger, however can value billions and take years to finish. Relying on the place you reside and the way dangerous the situations are, your energy supplier may inform you it’s turning off your lights for 18 hours or a number of days. Proactive security shutoffs are typically employed at utilities from Hawaii to Texas.
Lots of of consumers close to Carson Metropolis, Nevada, misplaced energy shortly earlier than Christmas as excessive winds raged and fireplace danger spiraled, in response to press stories, whereas residents outdoors Cheyenne, Wyoming, had been informed to organize for a possible shutoff amid comparable climate situations in January.
Earlier than he labored at Xcel, McGregor labored at Pacific Gasoline & Electrical Co., the utility serving northern and central California. The corporate rolled out a shutoff program in 2018, constructing on an concept pioneered by San Diego’s utility. Since its first proactive energy lower, PG&E’s meteorology crew has developed a system that has impressed different utilities to create their very own shutoff applications, advising how greatest to trace situations and design shutoff protocols that may be deployed shortly.
In a management room in PG&E’s San Ramon, California workplace, an enormous map looms, dotted with transmission strains, reducing throughout mountains and valleys, working alongside rivers and streams. It’s right here that Scott Strenfel, PG&E’s senior director of meteorology and fireplace science, alongside together with his crew of seven forecasters, displays the climate and decides when the chance of fireplace is just too nice to maintain power flowing throughout the utility’s huge transmission and distribution system.
Strenfel, 43, is extensively thought to be an trade chief on managing fireplace threats. He’s additionally a climate nerd who bought despatched to the principal’s workplace at his Southern California center faculty for being disruptive each time it rained. Strenfel was working at PG&E in 2017 when the utility’s gear sparked a string of catastrophic fires throughout Northern California. Mounting lawsuits and public stress led the corporate to start rolling out preventative shutoffs. (A sequence of wildfires led PG&E to file for chapter in 2019.)
How scientists make the decision to chop the ability is a sophisticated nexus of information, expertise and human judgment. “It’s a man-machine combine,” Strenfel says. “Fashions aren’t good.” And making the suitable choice could be agonizing.
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“I wouldn’t need that job,” says San Jose State College fireplace climate scientist Craig Clements, who Strenfel studied with whereas he was on the faculty. “It’s in all probability probably the most anxious — and one of many extra necessary — meteorology positions on the earth.”
On the coronary heart of their operations is knowledge. The utility, which offers energy to greater than 5 million clients, now operates greater than 1,600 climate stations perched atop its energy strains in distant mountain passes, which report real-time wind speeds, wind gusts, humidity and temperature no less than each 10 minutes. The corporate tracks how a lot moisture is packed into grasses and brush, to find out how shortly they may ignite. It additionally purchases world forecast fashions from a number of sources and depends on fashions from third-party brokers equivalent to Technosylva, which designs climate forecasting and fireplace prediction software program.
California’s fireplace danger has been low in latest weeks, because of atmospheric rivers that introduced heavy, soaking rains to the West Coast in early winter. That rain additionally fueled an outgrowth of superb grasses, which began to die off in some areas because the climate turned sizzling and dry. Wetter, cooler situations are lastly anticipated to maneuver again into the West later this month — however the long-term sample suggests they could not stick round.
The meteorologists at PG&E stay vigilant. In a every day assembly, Strenfel and his coworkers have a look at the AI-powered fashions, which take into account each the chance of utility gear sparking a hearth in addition to potential harm, and talk about the dangers. The machine studying fashions make suggestions on whether or not to close off energy or not, and if issues are “cusp-y,” the meteorologists take a more in-depth look. If situations are ripe for a lethal conflagration, meteorologists monitor situations 24/7 alongside a senior PG&E govt.
There’s rather a lot at stake: PG&E’s neighbor, Edison Worldwide’s Southern California utility, is dealing with a whole lot of lawsuits alleging its gear began the Eaton fireplace, which killed 19 folks and razed a part of the group of Altadena one yr in the past throughout a record-breaking windstorm. The utility later mentioned it detected a fault on certainly one of its transmission strains close to the time the hearth began.
Regardless of California’s latest run of catastrophic blazes, wildfire acreage throughout the state almost halved final yr, all the way down to about 525,000 acres from over a million acres in 2024, in response to Cal Hearth. Over the previous few years, PG&E has narrowed the scope and period of its preventative outages, and PG&E clients who skilled disruptive PSPS shutoffs decreased by 64% in 2025 in comparison with the yr prior.
However the firm’s use of unplanned outages has remained excessive: PG&E and different utilities can allow “fast-trip” security settings, which stop fires by shortly reducing lower the circulation of energy if a tree limb or different object strikes a line. In 2025, roughly 839,000 clients skilled fast-trip outages — solely a slight enchancment over the earlier yr.
Huge shutoffs are uncommon, just like the one PG&E leveled on October 27, 2019. It was a yr after the lethal Camp Hearth, and Strenfel suggested the utility to take almost a million clients offline amid record-strong winds and ideal wildfire situations. The corporate had solely shut off the ability resulting from fireplace danger a handful of occasions — and by no means to so many shoppers directly. There was extreme blowback: refrigerated insulin misplaced, C-PAP respiration machines out of energy, hospitals and colleges shuttered. PG&E was subsequently fined over $100 million by the state utility regulator. Strenfel remembers seeing a video of downtown Napa in a complete blackout and feeling “combined feelings.” “It might have been achieved a lot better,” he mentioned.
But he’s comforted by the actual fact they prevented one thing huge. Within the days following the widespread energy shutoff, the most important in PG&E historical past, the utility discovered greater than 550 situations of injury on strains, which might have resulted in a spark.
“No one is ever going to know that as a result of it didn’t occur,” says atmospheric scientist Scott Capps, previously with fireplace prediction software program supplier Technosylva. “It’s a damned-if–you-do, damned-if-you-don’t choice if you happen to flip the ability off.”
High picture: Scott Strenfel within the Meteorology and Hearth Science room. Photographer: Manuel Orbegozo/Bloomberg.
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