The incoming winter cold front has shut down San Joaquin Delta College and prompted the City of Stockton to open its warming centers on Thursday.
SJDC lost heating to a majority of its Stockton campus buildings Wednesday and will remain closed through Sunday, according Alex Brietler the college Director of Marketing and Communications.
Brietler said the recurring heating issues are likely a result of the campus infrastructure. The college is heated by a series of underground pipes that push heated water through the buildings, but the pipes are about 30 years old, Brietler said.
“There are leaks that pop up, and we’ve had a few of those over just the last couple months,” Brietler told Stocktonia Thursday. “They haven’t been quite as disruptive as this one because one of them happened during winter break, and the others were patched relatively quickly.”
Brietler said that because of the incoming freezing weather, SJDC officials felt it would be best to close the campus. An update of the campus closure status was posted to the SJDC website Thursday evening, alerting students, faculty and staff that the campus would remain closed through Sunday.
A wind advisory is in effect until Thursday evening for most of the Sacramento Valley, as theNational Weather Service forecast shows overnight temperatures into Friday hover near freezing in Stockton.
Tony Mannor, head of Stockton’s Office of Public Transparency, Information and Communication, announced the activation of city warming centers Thursday evening to provide relief for residents without access to heat or proper shelter.
Warming centers are activated in Stockton when the San Joaquin County Office of Emergency Services issues a notification that outside temperatures have reached the threshold for an extreme cold weather event.
“We’re planning (the warming centers) for the next two days, and then we will take it as the weather conditions continue,” Mannor said. “We have our own internal policies to activate the warming center if it meets our threshold, and under an abundance of caution and service to the community, we follow what is put out by the county OES.”
The two warming centers in Stockton are held at the Arnold Rue Community Center, 5758 Lorraine Avenue, and the Stribley Community Center, 1760 E. Sonora St. Mannor shared the warming centers will be open Thursday and Friday, with check-in at 8 p.m. and check-out by 7 a.m.
Early-morning and late-night forecasts in Stockton between Thursday and Sunday show temperatures between 34 degrees and 44 degrees, according to the NWS.
The intense weather has caused some disruptions to local facilities in Northern California.
Multiple school districts in Northern California are also closed as a winter storm warning for most of the northeast Sierra Nevada foothills, according to the NWS.