Thousands lose power, roads flood during Christmas storm in Sacramento area

Graham Womack, The Sacramento Bee on Dec 25, 2025

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A winter storm rocked the Sacramento region on Wednesday night and Thursday morning, bringing high winds, rain and power outages.

Here’s a roundup of what occurred and the weather outlook.

Outages around the Sacramento region

Numerous outages were reported around the greater Sacramento region during the storm.

One outage affected 3,947 PG&E customers in Grass Valley, coming at 4:35 a.m. Thursday. Power hadn’t been restored as of 8:30 a.m. The outage was attributed to storm damage. It appeared to have been the second-largest PG&E outage in the state in this timeframe, trailing only Santa Cruz, where 6,419 customers lost power early Thursday.

In Granite Bay, 1,136 PG&E customers lost power at 5:18 a.m. on Thursday due to tree damage. Power had not been restored as of 9 a.m.

Other PG&E outages in the Sacramento region on Thursday morning included: Olivehurst, where 2,241 customers experienced an outage because of an equipment issue; Oroville, where 1,748 customers had an outage due to storm damage; and Walnut Grove, where 1,746 customers lost power due to the storm.

It wasn’t just PG&E, though, reporting outages. More than 2,300 outages of SMUD or LUCA customers were also reported in this timeframe.

One outage came at 5:53 a.m. in the Cordova Meadows area of Rancho Cordova, affecting 522 customers., according SMUD. . The cause of the outage was unknown.

Another outage occurred in Tahoma in El Dorado County, affecting 810 customers of utility provider LUCA beginning at 10:26 p.m. on Wednesday. The outage was attributed to weather.

Placer County had two outages of roughly 150 customers each. There was an outage in Roseville at 4:04 a.m. Thursday, , affecting 155 SMUD customers, attributed to equipment issues. And just before 7 a.m., an outage was reported affecting 153 LUCA customers in Kings Beach.

Chain controls in the Sierra

Chains were required for most vehicles on Interstate 80 between Truckee and 2.1 miles east of Baxter, according to the California Department of Transportation, as of about 9 a.m. on Thursday.

The only vehicles exempted from this were “4-wheel-drive vehicles with snow tires on all 4 wheels,” Caltrans’ website noted.

Semi-tractor trailers aren’t being allowed from Applegate in Placer County to Nevada “due to multiple spinouts,” the site noted.

Road conditions in Sacramento

Road flooding was reported in some parts of Sacramento, according to the California Highway Patrol.

Southbound lanes were flooded in the 2300 block of Watt Avenue as of 7:27 a.m. Thursday Seven minutes later, flooding was reported in the 5100 block of Tyler Street.

Flooding was also reported early Thursday on northbound State Route 99 near Ayers Lane and around the conflux of southbound Interstate 5 and eastbound U.S. 50.

Weather outlook

Murky weather could continue throughout Christmas Day.

The National Weather Service reported that a winter storm warning was in effect for mountain areas just east of Grass Valley, Auburn and Placerville. Snow was expected to fall heavily Thursday morning in places in the Sierra such as Emigrant Gap.

“White Christmas anyone?” NWS Sacramento tweeted. “Moderate to heavy snow is currently falling in the Sierra.”

While Sacramento saw blue skies on Thursday morning, the city didn’t completely escape notice from the NWS. Sacramento and much of the surrounding region is under a high-wind warning.

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