Update: 4,600 in SLO County without power after atmospheric river storm slams California

Update, 2:50 p.m.:

The number of people without power in San Luis Obispo County nearly doubled Monday afternoon, as PG&E worked to address 200 outages across the area.

PG&E spokesperson Carina Corral said 4,600 customers were without electricity as of 2:30 p.m.

“The challenging areas are below the Grade in areas such as Cambria, San Luis Obispo, Arroyo Grande and Grover Beach where the vegetation is thick with trees,” she told The Tribune. “Our crews are working tirelessly to restore power to all affected customers.”

According to PG&E’s outage report map, a pair of larger outages were impacting several hundred customers on Monday afternoon, as well as a slew of smaller ones throughout county.

In Arroyo Grande, 558 customers had been without electricity since 10:33 a.m. The outage was impacting customers in the residential area around Oak Park Boulevard.

Just to the south, 225 customers in the Halcyon Road area were still without electricity more than 30 hours after a large eucalyptus tree knocked down power lines and prompted a shelter in place order in the area on Sunday.

Power is expected to be restored to those customers by 10 p.m., according to PG&E’s outage map.

“This was one of the top three most damaging, single-day storms on record for PG&E,” Corral said. “Since Sunday, crews have restored 765,000 customers service area wide.”

Original story:

A day after widespread storm-caused outages left nearly 40,000 customers without power throughout San Luis Obispo County, several thousand people still didn’t have electricity as of Monday morning.

According to the San Luis Obispo County Office of Emergency Services, approximately 2,000 PG&E customers were without power as of 9:30 a.m.

“If you are one of those customers, they are working quickly towards restoration,” the office said in a post on X.

The outages came as a massive atmospheric river storm slammed into California, bringing with it high winds, toppled trees and power lines, and heavy rain.

More rain was in the forecast for Monday and Tuesday.

According to the National Weather Service, rainfall totals of 3 to 6 inches were expected across the Central Coast, with 6 to 12 inches likely across south and southwest facing foothills and mountains.

Rainfall rates of 0.5 to 1 inch per hour were expected during the peak of the event, the National Weather Service said.

A flood watch remained in effect for the entire county as of Monday morning. It was expected to expire Tuesday afternoon.