Monitoring incoming storms with PG&E

PG&E Marine Meteorologist John Lindsey starts his day forecasting the weather around 4 a.m. each morning.

With this latest storm cell coming in, Lindsey is using every tool in his arsenal to track what the weather might do.

“So we’re pretty busy monitoring the meteorological towers like this one. We’re monitoring the wave rider buoys from Scripps. We’re also monitoring the NOAA buoys because they have anemometers also,” Lindsey explained.

This technology can give an inside look at things like temperatures, wave heights, wind speed and even predict how much rain could fall.

But mother nature is still pretty unpredictable at times. “Those types of cells could always produce some really severe weather at times. You never really know – a thunderstorm cell could produce hail, downbursts and really strong winds,” Lindsey said.

Using data collected by meteorologists like Lindsey, PG&E crews can forecast not only when an outage could happen but also possibly prevent one. “If we have an area that looks like it’s going to have a lot of outage activity, then we’ll actually pre-position line crews in that area to restore power as safely and quickly as possible,” Lindsey said.

You can follow Lindsey’s weather tracking here.