Pacific Gas & Electric Company (PG&E) has now installed more than 600 weather stations and 130 HD cameras in Northern and one HD camera in Central California as part of its Community Wildfire Safety Program. These networks will be utilized in areas especially prone to wildfires. Enhanced weather forecasting and modeling will help improve PG&E'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.”
PG&E says that among the 130 HD cameras now installed across PG&E’s service territory, there is currently one located in San Luis Obispo County – at the top of Cuesta Peak. Currently PG&E does not yet have any cameras installed in northern Santa Barbara County service area.
The HD cameras are part of ALERTWildfire Camera Network, [alertwildfire.org] 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. These cameras allow the emergency responder network to monitor wildfires. PG&E has major installation plans to "install 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."
Fore more information about these weather stations or wildfire safety visit the following websites:
www.pge.com/weather [pge.com]
https://www.pge.com/en_US/safety/emergency-preparedness/natural-disaster/wildfires/wildfire-safety.page?WT.mc_id=Vanity_wildfiresafety
http://www.alertwildfire.org/
https://www.wrh.noaa.gov/map/?wfo=mtr&obs=true
www.fire.ca.gov [fire.ca.gov].
