Wind advisory cites all of the counties surrounding us, but not ours. Still, be advised that wind goes wherever it wants to go, and the ground is moist and old heavy trees are at risk of blowing down.

...WIND ADVISORY REMAINS IN EFFECT UNTIL 1 PM PST WEDNESDAY...
...FROST ADVISORY REMAINS IN EFFECT FROM MIDNIGHT WEDNESDAY NIGHT
TO 9 AM PST THURSDAY...

* WHAT...For the Wind Advisory, northwest winds 25 to 35 mph
with gusts up to 50 mph expected at higher elevations. For the
Frost Advisory, temperatures as low as 34 will result in frost
formation.

* WHERE...Coastal areas of Sonoma County, Marin County, San
Mateo County, Santa Cruz County, and Monterey County including
the Northern Salinas Valley, as well as the City of San
Francisco and areas along the San Francisco Bay Shoreline.

* WHEN...For the Wind Advisory, until 1 PM PST Wednesday. For
the Frost Advisory, from midnight Wednesday night to 9 AM PST
Thursday.

* IMPACTS...Gusty winds could blow around unsecured objects.
Tree limbs could be blown down and a few power outages may
result. Cold temperatures will impact unsheltered or
marginally sheltered populations. Frost could kill sensitive
outdoor vegetation if left uncovered.

* ADDITIONAL DETAILS...Don't forget to protect people, pets,
plants, and pipes.

PRECAUTIONARY/PREPAREDNESS ACTIONS...

Use extra caution when driving, especially if operating a high
profile vehicle. Secure outdoor objects.

Take steps now to protect tender plants from the cold.

The portion of the tree that came down in our backyard is twice the size of the tree pictured above. Fortunately we still have power because decades ago our neighborhood got underground wiring.

I'm still wondering why the city is making it a priority to spend $144M on fiber instead of undergrounding the wiring city-wide.
'

Today it is windy. Of course we have power outages.

Get those wires underground asap.

All but 83 homes is not how it looks in old Palo Alto and midtown. Are we sure they are actually aware ?

For the general area including Stanford, the numbers are in the thousands of outages, not in the hundreds as reported for PA alone:
Web Link

Another update:multiple people on Twitter reported our update in Old Palo Alto with no response from Palo alot utilities.

Also the PAU map does not provide any information or restoration times for our outage.

And, calling the number listed in your article is futile. There is no way to speak to someone or leave a message.

We lost power in Midtown for an hour. Not a big deal considering how strong the winds are blowing. Thanks CPAU for restoring us so quickly!!!

Hello
Thousands of customers were without power in East Palo Alto and on the Stanford University campus, according to PG&E. In East Palo Alto, multiple outages affecting more than 7,279 customers began in three waves at 2:10 p.m. 2:25 p.m. and 3:05 p.m. Web Link

Kudos and thanks to the utility teams that go out in the field. They are exceptional. I regularly watch CC meetings and I do not recall ever hearing complaints from them about too much work or prioritizing projects. They simply do what needs to be done.

I also agree with those calling for the under-grounding of the power lines. Seems pretty clear that that should be a priority.

Not only are businesses affected by this as well as homes, but when 2 elementary schools have to close this is no longer a minor inconvenience!

Almost 200,000 people lost power in the Bay Area. Weather's getting worse and outages are longer and more frequent.

Maybe PA shouldn't be rushing us to do forced conversions to all electric, at least until all of PA has underground wiring.

Sitting in the cold and dark with winds like we had yesterday isn't fun; it's dangerous.

I was SO impressed by the quick response to my local outage yesterday, and the rapid deployment of of alternative low-voltage lines to work around the failure.

I may not agree with the City Council's priorities, but I will never complain about CPAU & Fire personnel again!

Fantastic job! Thank you all for arriving on scene rapidly, extinguishing the fire that resulted, and keeping the lunatics who tried to drive on through the scene and over the downed live lines safe! Beautifully handled!

@Barbara G, I echo your praise for the CPAU and Fire field workers; they've always been great and responsive and quite humorous about the failures of their management and their policies.

Our power in Midtown was out for about an hour late afternoon on Tuesday. The Utility staff had a LOT of outages to deal with and, reading the numbers in this PAWeekly report, there were relatively short times to get most people reconnected. Kudos to the CPAU staff for a job well done!

I want to add my thanks to CPAU workers for getting power back relatively quickly. My SIL lives in MP, and her power is expected to be out until tomorrow evening, so of course she came and stayed with us.

In January 2021, Patricia Poppe became PG&E's CEO. She does television commercials for the utility, explaining [and demonstrating] that it is now under-grounding all of its lines. That it's the ONLY safe approach.

If PG&E can do this with its thousands of miles of lines, surely we can. Think of forest fires, wind, rainstorms and other things that do and can impact our electricity transmission. And then there is vandalism.

Previously cost figures for under-grounding were put forth by Mr. Shikada. These were wrong, as were claims of dangers to utilities staff. Not only have there been no underground transformer explosions to-date [I think], no CPAU maintenance employee has been injured. And such an explosion has a fail-safe. Streets with underground utilities have open grids on the curbs. These permit smoke to escape into ambient air, preventing pressure buildup.

Keep in mind that every commercial and residential building gets electricity via underground equipment. Why? Setbacks are too restricted to permit other types of transmission equipment. Builders maximize their space.

CPAU staff are obviously trained to maintain underground utilities. Palo Alto has thousands of such transformers.

This is the safest, most economical and reliable way to transmit electricity.

Regarding safety, drive through the hills and see transformer enclosures. They are chain-link CAGES. Moreover, pad mount front yard transformers have huge warnings "Keep Off / Danger" They include drawings of stick figures being killed by lightning as they climb stairs.

Our CPAU staff work very, very hard to maintain our power and safety. But they are not the decision-makers.

Middlefield all the way from Oregon Expwy to Oak Grove in Menlo Park was interesting today. I was just glad we aren't Paradise, trying to flee from a conflagration. We have a non existent disaster plan. ECR is becoming unbearable due to the potholes caused largely by all of the heavy construction vehicles that traverse it night and day. With Middlefield being a bottleneck, and 101 with signs promising "tolls start soon" there will soon be no viable way to travel north and south without just sitting there in stalled traffic. The (free) "slow lane" will become the "read a book lane as you inch forward" lane on 101. Good times!

The bollards at every Middlefield intersection that prevent drivers from turning have screwed up traffic ever since they were installed many years ago. The city's reason for them is that they "increase visibility " -- which is a bad joke given the increased gridlock and number of accidents since they were installed.

I was in the Midtown power outage Tuesday. It wasn't very long, as others said. Around midnight I went outside to see what all the noise was - it was crews putting in the new lines. That's some dedication from the city utilities department! My kids in Sunnyvale said PG&E wont' do that.

I was just glad we aren't Paradise, trying to flee from a conflagration. We have a non existent disaster plan. ECR is becoming unbearable due to the potholes caused largely by all of the heavy construction vehicles that traverse it night and day. With Middlefield being a bottleneck, and 101 with signs promising "tolls start soon" there will soon be no viable way to travel north and south without just sitting there in stalled traffic. The (free) "slow lane" will become the "read a book lane as you inch forward" lane on 101. Good times!

I used to live near Palo Alto, but now live back east. We have lots of mature trees in my community and when we have storms/wind, the trees come down on the power lines. We've been told that undergrounding wires is VERY EXPENSIVE, so who would pay for it? Newer developments always have underground wiring, but it is the older neighborhoods that suffer. Solution? Would your electric bills go up to pay for the undergrounding?

East Palo Alto, Menlo Park, Redwood City, all have not hours without power but days without power. This is not some remote mountain area, but the flat cosmopolitan Silicon Valley area. Unbelievable!

California is unable to provide efficient and reliable electrical service to its residents and yet still seems to want more of us to switch to electricity and EVs. Not going to happen.

A few decades age homeowners like me paid about $8,000 in a lump sum payment. We were told that if we didn't /couldn't do it, the city said it would and would then bill us or deduct the cost from our utility bills. The city provided a list of "approved" contractors and we had to pick one.

I think it was around 1992 or 1993 for my neighborhood. We rarely have power outages and when we do, they don't last very long.

Can anyone tell me how "ConnectEBT" can hijack a person's comment and then add a link to a sketchy website?

CHP closed 101 in both directions in Menlo Park today to repair a broken line. Hopefully East Palo Alto and Menlo Park will now have their power returned after more than 2 days without it!