California wildfires: PG&E's intentional outages add to misery

• The utility cited forecasts through Wednesday morning of "widespread, severely dry conditions and strong, gusty winds that create critical fire weather with high ignition risk."
• However, the company said distributed generation and other tactics will allow about 69,000 customers and several medical facilities to maintain power.
• More than 500,000 people overall could be impacted, per WSJ.

The big picture: The new outages are just the latest woes in a state facing a brutal summer of extreme heat and bad fires.

• The state's grid manager imposed rolling blackouts last month amid high demand, but was able to avoid repeating that step in recent days as it urged people to ease consumption.

Why it matters: Beyond the immediate danger and misery, the state is feeling the effects of climate change, which worsens extreme heat and also is one of the forces fueling western wildfires.

What they're saying: The Washington Post writes, "Michael Wehner, who researches extreme weather events at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, estimates 'climate change has caused extreme heat waves to be 3 to 4 degrees Fahrenheit warmer in California.'"

Go deeper:

• California wildfires raze a record 2 million acres
• PG&E begins blackouts for 172,000 California customers as Diablo winds raise wildfire risk (Sacramento Bee)