What if rolling blackouts return to California?
Wildfire line de-energization plus demand spikes push CAISO into rotating outages; the modeled channel runs to crops via heat/drought, but the real read is California power scarcity and PSPS economic drag. Rhymes with the August 2020 CAISO rotating blackouts and the 2019 PG&E PSPS events. Skeptical note: mapping a CA grid event to a generic climate_supply crop shock is a stretch — the grain-yield cascade is the wrong channel; this is a localized power-reliability and utility-liability story (PCG), not an ag shock.
how we built this number — every step
The class rate is measured from our dated, sourced event library (decade-normalized Poisson — the full table is public at base_rates.json). The variant’s share within its class is the analyst’s editorial call, published so you can audit it. A wider range means thinner precedent. Full recipe: methodology · scored at Reality Check.
The butterfly cascade
How this trigger trickles across markets, left → right — the root shock, its first‑order moves, then the ripple effects. Drag any node; tap a market for its real price history.
Resolution timeline — how this probability is moving
Our model's odds (gold) over time vs the crowd's (Polymarket, blue), from the past toward the 0–6 months horizon. Each dot is a real macro event that nudged the probability — green pushed it up, red pushed it down. Tap a dot for the source. The gold path is an illustrative reconstruction anchored to today's estimate — real dated events, not a live re-estimate history.
What it would mean
If this plays out, it is a mixed shock. Wildfire-driven line de-energization plus demand spikes force CAISO into multi-day rotating outages across the state. The trigger decomposes into signed root‑shocks — European energy ▲ · Industrial demand ▼ — which propagate through our causal graph to the markets below.
If it happens — the markets it would move
Biggest moves first. Projected moves are cascade-model priors; hist A–B% = what comparable past events actually did (measured abnormal returns), and model prior · unmeasured marks markets with no analogue backing yet. Tap any market for its price history.
| Market | Class | Projected move | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Freeport (copper) FCX 📈 chart | Equity | ▼ -0.2% hist -3.42–+5.49% · other way +4.13% (n=12) |
Historical precedent — what analogous events actually did
Across 14 analogous events (overlap‑weighted), as abnormal returns — market beta stripped, so it's the event's own effect, not the market backdrop. Shown at 20 days (persistent) and 5 days (immediate); ↺ fades = the two horizons disagree. Confidence = consistency × sample × significance.
| Asset | History says | Abnormal (20d · 5d) | Hit | n | Confidence | vs cascade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bitcoin BTC | SHORT | -2.5% · 5d -0.0% | 83% | 5 | 0.34 | · |
| FCX FCX | LONG | +5.7% · 5d +2.8% | 68% | 11 | 0.33 | ⚠ differs |
| High-yield credit HYG | SHORT | -0.1% · 5d +0.1% ↺ fades | 55% | 9 | 0.07 | · |
| Gold XAU | SHORT | -1.1% · 5d -0.3% | 52% | 11 | 0.04 | · |
| Volatility VIX | SHORT | -1.0% · 5d -1.4% | 44% | 11 | 0.00 | · |
| US dollar DXY | LONG | +0.1% · 5d -0.5% ↺ fades | 45% | 14 | 0.00 | · |
| 10y yield DGS10 | LONG | +9bp · 5d +6bp | 48% | 14 | 0.00 | · |
Why this probability
California fire-season de-energizations recurrent; multi-day rotating outages plausible most summers. A base‑rate‑anchored prior, continuously scored against what actually happens — not a forecast.