UPDATE (10/28/19): Please read this post for updates on the latest PG&E power outages.
Just a heads up, we’re in wildfire season here in California and a combination of high temperatures and high winds mean the fire danger in our area is very high.
We’ve been warned that our local power company “may cut power to a large part of Sonoma County” on Wednesday and Thursday. If they do, we’ll be off the air until they turn it back on. And without power we’ll have no way to let you know what’s going on. I wanted to let you know ahead of time.
UPDATE: the power has been cut. We’ll let you know when it’s going to return. Probably not until Friday. This community, our web site, and our chat run on outside servers so they’re unaffected. Downloads will continue normally, thanks to Cachefly. In fact, everything online is the same - it’s only our physical ability to make content that’s inhibited.
Thursday 5p UPDATE: The Red Flag Fire Danger has ended, and PG&E has restored power to our studio!
This is the streaming recording schedule for tomorrow:
10:30 AM Windows Weekly
1:30 PM This Week in Google
2:30 PM This Week in Enterprise Tech
4:00 PM Tech News Weekly
We’re all stoked. We missed you all! See you tomorrow!!!
Watching the local news… looks like we will lose power to the TWiT Studios at midnight. The “wind event” that’s prompting this will end midday Thursday but they won’t turn on the power until they can be sure the lines are intact. PG&E says this could take as long as five days. I’d guess in an urban area like ours it won’t take nearly as long. With any luck we’ll be back Friday.
Until then know we’re staying safe. The hope is this shutdown will forestall the wildfires that were so devastating in 2017. Our team will be back and raring to go soon.
I think this announcement was originally locked, so couldn’t be replied to. @Bgeeoz created a topic for replies at Stay safe first so if this topic gets locked again that could be an alternative place to post.
We didn’t plan for this because it has never happened before. In fact, this is the first power outage in the three years we’ve been in the Eastside Studios, but if this is the new normal we’ll figure something out.
Day 2 Fire Weather Outlook
NWS Storm Prediction Center Norman OK
0236 AM CDT Wed Oct 09 2019
Valid 101200Z - 111200Z
…EXTREMELY CRITICAL FIRE WEATHER AREA FOR PORTIONS OF LOS ANGELES
AND VENTURA COUNTIES…
…CRITICAL FIRE WEATHER AREA FOR MUCH OF THE TRANSVERSE AND
PENINISULAR RANGES OF CALIFORNIA…
…CRITICAL FIRE WEATHER AREA FOR SACRAMENTO VALLEY…EASTERN
PORTIONS OF THE NORTHERN COAST RANGES…SIERRA NEVADA FOOTHILLS…
…Synopsis…
A strong upper-level trough will continue moving eastward over the
Intermountain West and onto the Plains on Thursday. An associated
surface cold front will continue moving south and east pushing
through much of the Southwest and Plains by Thursday night. Strong
surface high pressure will broaden over the interior western CONUS
strengthening the surface pressure gradient between the Great Basin
and the California coast resulting in strong downslope/offshore
winds.
…southern California…
Extremely critical conditions are likely to develop across portions
of Ventura and Los Angeles Counties, especially in the higher
terrain, with northeasterly sustained winds of 30-35 mph and RH
values of 5-10% expected. Critical conditions (northeast-east winds
of 20-35 mph with RH value of 5-15%) will begin early Thursday
morning and continue through overnight across the Transverse and
Peninsular Ranges and vicinity. Wind gusts of 50-60+ mph are likely,
especially in the mountains, where locally extremely critical
conditions are possible outside the current area. Fuels are dry with
ERCs/100-hour dead fuel moisture values approaching or at 90th/10th
percentiles. While critical, if not extremely critical winds/RH are
expected in southeast California/southwest Arizona, lack of fuels
precludes an upgrade over elevated.
…northern California…
Critical conditions will continue Thursday morning into Thursday
night across much of the Sacramento Valley and into portions of the
eastern northern Coast Ranges and Sierra Nevada Foothills.
North-northeasterly sustained surface winds of 15-25 mph with gusts
of 30-50 mph and RH values of 5-20% are expected across the region
with some locations experiencing critical winds/RH for 24+
consecutive hours (Wednesday-Thursday). The surface pressure
gradient and upper-level support will begin to weaken Thursday
evening with only elevated/locally critical conditions continuing in
portions of the critical tomorrow night.
The problem with knowing when the power might be back is that PG&E have said they can’t turn it back on until they’ve inspected all the power lines that pass through the areas forecast for 60mph+ gusts, in case a downed and broken line starts a fire when it gets powered. I haven’t seen anything about how long they think that will take.
They said up to five days. I expect our area will be sooner because it’s an office park. Inspection of lines will be easy.
But with PG&E anything can happen. Their “real-time” outage map is down and they’re supposed to be tweeting the info, but they’re not. Needless to say, people are pretty unhappy with them around here. I now believe that they’re doing the right thing, based on the weather forecast. But as of now there’s zero wind!
Yeah, I’ve seen some of their efforts: “here’s a map” (tiny, grainy map) “click to expand” - link either fails to load, or worse, takes you to an out of date plain-text site with a certificate that doesn’t match the address and worse still, is provided by Comodo. I seem to remember there have been some big problems with suspect Comodo certificates in the past, e.g. Naked Security – Sophos News . Apologies if I’m unfairly maligning Comodo, but it’s the sort of thing that just adds to the concerns.
I can see on Twitter that there are a lot of unhappy customers who have had next to no warning about this extreme solution, giving no opportunity to plan ahead. No fun trying to run a business when they can just pull the rug out from under you like that.
