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 generally shutting off the ability in a bid to maintain their gear from sparking a doubtlessly ruinous blaze.
Throughout giant pockets of Texas, New Mexico and Colorado, high-quality grasses and brush that gasoline fires have dried out as La Niña largely holds important 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 Power Inc. ordered a number of rounds of preventative energy cuts in Colorado for greater than 50,000 prospects, 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 mandatory. Behind the scenes, Xcel executives had been heeding recommendation from a workforce of climate scientists as they determined the place and when to chop the move of energy. It “all begins with meteorology,” says Paul McGregor, the corporate’s vice chairman of wildfire danger administration.
It’s a part of a broader pattern throughout the utility business, as corporations past California — the place PSPS packages 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 scale back fireplace danger, however can price billions and take years to finish. Relying on the place you reside and the way dangerous the situations are, your energy supplier would possibly let you know it’s turning off your lights for 18 hours or a number of days. Proactive security shutoffs are generally employed at utilities from Hawaii to Texas.
A whole lot of shoppers close to Carson Metropolis, Nevada, misplaced energy shortly earlier than Christmas as excessive winds raged and fireplace danger spiraled, in keeping with press experiences, whereas residents exterior Cheyenne, Wyoming, had been instructed to arrange for a possible shutoff amid related climate situations in January.
Earlier than he labored at Xcel, McGregor labored at Pacific Fuel & 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 workforce has developed a system that has impressed different utilities to create their very own shutoff packages, advising how finest 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, operating 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 workforce of seven forecasters, displays the climate and decides when the danger of fireside is just too nice to maintain power flowing throughout the utility’s huge transmission and distribution system.
Strenfel, 43, is broadly thought to be an business chief on managing fireplace threats. He’s additionally a climate nerd who obtained despatched to the principal’s workplace at his Southern California center college 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 strain led the corporate to start rolling out preventative shutoffs. (A collection 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 best resolution 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 college. “It’s most likely probably the most worrying — and one of many extra necessary — meteorology positions on the planet.”
On the coronary heart of their operations is knowledge. The utility, which supplies energy to greater than 5 million prospects, 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 not less than each 10 minutes. The corporate tracks how a lot moisture is packed into grasses and brush, to find out how shortly they might 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 current weeks, because of atmospheric rivers that introduced heavy, soaking rains to the West Coast in early winter. That rain additionally fueled an outgrowth of high-quality grasses, which began to die off in some areas because the climate turned scorching 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 day by day assembly, Strenfel and his coworkers have a look at the AI-powered fashions, which think about each the chance of utility gear sparking a fireplace in addition to potential injury, and focus on 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 better look. If situations are ripe for a lethal conflagration, meteorologists monitor situations 24/7 alongside a senior PG&E government.
There’s loads at stake: PG&E’s neighbor, Edison Worldwide’s Southern California utility, is going through a whole bunch of lawsuits alleging its gear began the Eaton fireplace, which killed 19 individuals and razed a part of the neighborhood of Altadena one yr in the past throughout a record-breaking windstorm. The utility later mentioned it detected a fault on one among its transmission strains close to the time the fireplace began.
Regardless of California’s current 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 keeping with Cal Hearth. Over the previous few years, PG&E has narrowed the scope and period of its preventative outages, and PG&E prospects 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 move of energy if a tree limb or different object strikes a line. In 2025, roughly 839,000 prospects skilled fast-trip outages — solely a slight enchancment over the earlier yr.
Large 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 prospects 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 purchasers directly. There was extreme blowback: refrigerated insulin misplaced, C-PAP respiration machines out of energy, hospitals and faculties 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 carried out significantly better,” he mentioned.
But he’s comforted by the very fact they prevented one thing massive. Within the days following the widespread energy shutoff, the largest in PG&E historical past, the utility discovered greater than 550 situations of injury on strains, which might have resulted in a spark.
“No person 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 resolution in case you flip the ability off.”
Prime photograph: Scott Strenfel within the Meteorology and Hearth Science room. Photographer: Manuel Orbegozo/Bloomberg.
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