California Power Outage Map as Nearly 600,000 People Impacted

The fierce winter storms ravaging California knocked out power for more than 850,000 customers on Sunday—with more than half a million still without electricity today.

The lights went out across a swathe of the state from Sacramento to just north of Los Angeles when the region was deluged with heavy rains and severe winds.

It comes as the National Weather Service warned that "locally catastrophic and life-threatening flooding is expected" in some parts of California, while others areas have seen dangerous mudflows and landslides.

Authorities have asked some residents to leave their homes for safety reasons, and celebrities are among those facing evacuation as a result of the life-threatening weather system barreling across the state.

A website tracking power outages across the U.S. has published a map showing the areas that have been hit. More than half a million—some 562,233 customers—have lost power, according to poweroutage.us. The map can be seen below.

The areas shaded red mean that 60 to 100 per cent of customers there have lost power, while yellow and orange shading means that 10 to 30 percent of customers have been affected. Blue areas mean that between 0 and 9 percent have been hit.

The website is constantly being updated. Earlier this morning, the total number of Californians without power stood at 562,233, but that figure has now dropped slightly to 530,820. Nevertheless, it means that more than half a million people are still in the grip of an outage.

By far, the largest number of customers hit with outages get their supply from the Pacific Gas and Electric Company. Figures compiled by poweroutage.us suggest that 470,867 of its customers are currently suffering outages. But several other companies have been affected too, such as the Sacramento Municipal Utility District, which has 42,240 customers without power.

Newsweek has reached out by email to Pacific Gas and Electric Company seeking further information and comment.

The firm has been posting advisories on X, warning that: "Downed trees/branches could be hiding a power line. Assume all wires are energized and extremely dangerous. Don touch or try to move it."

Several customers replied to the post criticizing the company over how long it was taking to restore the power. Some said they had been without it for more than 12 hours.

The company uploaded a post on X saying: "Continuing hazardous weather conditions may impact power restoration times."

The Governor of California, Gavin Newsom, declared a state of emergency for several counties in Southern California on Sunday as part of his team's efforts to respond to the storms.

His office posted on X explaining how residents should keep themselves safe with four main pieces of advice: sign up for local alerts at CalAlerts.org; avoid non-essential travel; be prepared for possible power outages with electronics kept charged and a supply of flashlights and batteries on hand; and follow the guidance of local authorities, such as evacuation orders and road closures.