SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--As part of its Community Wildfire Safety Program (CWSP), Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) has now installed more than 600 weather stations and 130 high-definition (HD) cameras across its service area. PG&E will continue to expand these networks in high fire-threat areas to enhance weather forecasting and modeling and improve the company’s ability to predict and respond to extreme wildfire danger.
“The station observations allow our meteorologists to analyze critical fire weather elements like extreme wind, temperature and low humidity,” said Ashley Helmetag, a PG&E senior meteorologist. “The stations and cameras are a part of our real-time situational awareness tools that assist us as we make decisions on Public Safety Power Shutoffs to protect our communities.”
This data is also critical information for PG&E’s analysts in the Wildfire Safety Operations Center, the “hub” from where the company monitors threats across its service territory and coordinates with first responders and public safety officials to respond to emerging threats.
Station observations are available to state and local agencies as well as the public, through online sources such as PG&E’s website, the National Weather Service and MesoWest.
The HD cameras are part of the ALERTWildfire Camera Network, a situational awareness tool built by the University of California San Diego, the University of Nevada, Reno and the University of Oregon. The high-definition, pan-tilt-zoom cameras have near-infrared capabilities that allow firefighters, first responders and companies such as PG&E to confirm and monitor wildfires.
More Planned
By 2022, PG&E plans to have installed 1,300 weather stations and 600 HD cameras – a density of one weather station roughly every 20 circuit-miles and video coverage of roughly 90 percent within the highest fire-risk areas.
Meteorology Information at your Fingertips
All of this information can be found at PG&E’s new weather webpage at www.pge.com/weather. The weather webpage also provides:
- Seven-day forecast updated daily by a PG&E meteorologist or fire scientist
- Detailed, localized weather conditions
- Maps that show whether the National Weather Service has called a Red Flag Warning and where
- Access to the thousands of weather stations and dozens of HD cameras in use by PG&E
- Daily sunrise and sunset timetable
For information about fire conditions in California, go to CAL FIRE’s website, www.fire.ca.gov.
For more information about the Community Wildfire Safety Program, including links to update contact information, resources for Public Safety Power Shutoffs and a schedule of upcoming regional open houses and webinars, visit PG&E’s website at www.pge.com/wildfiresafety.
About PG&E
Pacific Gas and Electric Company, a subsidiary of PG&E Corporation (NYSE:PCG), is one of the largest combined natural gas and electric energy companies in the United States. Based in San Francisco, with more than 20,000 employees, the company delivers some of the nation’s cleanest energy to nearly 16 million people in Northern and Central California. For more information, visit www.pge.com and www.pge.com/en/about/newsroom/index.page.
This news release contains forward-looking statements that are not historical facts, including statements about the beliefs, expectations, estimates, future plans and strategies of PG&E Corporation and Pacific Gas and Electric Company. These statements are based on current expectations and assumptions, which management believes are reasonable, and on information currently available to management, but are necessarily subject to various risks and uncertainties. In addition to the risk that these assumptions prove to be inaccurate, factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those contemplated by the forward-looking statements include factors disclosed in PG&E Corporation and Pacific Gas and Electric Company’s Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2018, their Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q for the quarters ended March 31, 2019 and June 30, 2019, and their subsequent reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Additional factors include, but are not limited to, those associated with the Chapter 11 cases of PG&E Corporation and Pacific Gas and Electric Company that commenced on January 29, 2019. PG&E Corporation and Pacific Gas and Electric Company undertake no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether due to new information, future events or otherwise, except to the extent required by law.
