Update, 2:50 p.m. Tuesday: PG&E says it has reduced the area â and the number of customers â that could be affected by threatened blackouts Wednesday. The exact scope of the reductions, however, was not immediately clear.
With high winds and heightened fire danger forecast to return to much of Northern California early Wednesday, PG&E had notified about 303,000 residents in 25 counties on Monday that power could be shut off as a safety measure.
Late Tuesday morning, the utility said it had reduced the overall scope of the potential outage to roughly 171,000 customers â at least 400,000 people.
The company’s 24-hour notice of a power shutoff did not give the exact geographic extent or a county-by-county breakdown of the potential blackout, but offered a regional list of customers notified:
North Bay counties: 59,386 customers PG&E North Valley Division: 15,691 customers Central Sierra counties: 83,970 customers Northern Sierra counties: 12,434 customers
But not all the numbers the company released agreed with that summary.
A company spokeswoman said that five Bay Area counties had been removed from the potential shutoff list â Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, San Mateo and Santa Clara. Outside the immediate region, three other counties â Santa Cruz, Amador and Colusa â were also removed from the outage list.
Based on the company’s most recently updated list of county-by-county shutoffs â and subtracting the counties that have been removed from the outage notifications â about 205,000 customers in 17 counties may face blackouts Wednesday into Thursday. That list is below. Stand by, though â it’s bound to change.
Original post, last updated 8:45 p.m. Monday
With a new onslaught of high winds forecast to sweep bone-dry Northern California starting Tuesday night, PG&E has notified customers in 25 counties it’s likely to impose another round of “public safety” blackouts this week.
In an updated list of potential shutoffs released Monday evening, the utility said the preemptive power outages beginning early Wednesday could affect a total of 303,000 customers, or at least 750,000 people, in an area stretching from the Santa Cruz Mountains through the East Bay and North Bay to the northern Sierra Nevada.
The Bay Area counties the utility has put on notice include Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, Napa, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Solano and Sonoma. The shutoffs are designed to minimize the chance power lines will touch off wildfires during periods of heightened fire danger.
The potentially affected counties outside the Bay Area include: Butte, Colusa, El Dorado, Glenn, Lake, Mendocino, Nevada, Placer, Plumas, Santa Cruz, Shasta, Sierra, Sutter, Tehama, Trinity, Yolo and Yuba.
The precise timing of the shutoffs across the Bay Area remained unclear Monday evening.
The Marin County Sheriff’s Office issued a Nixle alert saying a blackout could occur about 4 p.m. Wednesday, with the utility beginning to restore power after an “all clear” Thursday morning.
The Moraga Police Department put out a message saying that PG&E would begin to cut power at 9 a.m. Wednesday to a total of 18,584 customers in Lafayette, Moraga and Orinda.
The city of Berkeley tweeted that it was expecting a blackout early Wednesday in the southeastern corner of the city, in a hilly area near the Claremont Hotel. Later, the city said that all the affected addresses are actually in Oakland and that it was seeking confirmation of that from PG&E.
NWS Bay Area on Twitter The onshore winds today will be short-lived. Winds in the higher elevations will become offshore overnight and early Wednesday. Red Flag Warning goes into effect for the North Bay Mountains, East Bay Hills, & Diablo Range at 4 AM Wednesday. #CAwx #CAFire
The driving force behind the threatened shutoffs is a return of the windy weather that prompted four October blackouts affecting more than 2 million people in PG&E’s 70,000-square-mile service area.
The National Weather Service offices for the Bay Area and the Sacramento Valley-northern Sierra region issued red-flag fire warnings Monday afternoon because of a forecast of gusty northerly or northeasterly winds coupled with humidity levels falling to 10% to 20%.
The warnings are in effect from 4 a.m. Wednesday through 7 a.m. Thursday.
In a forecast updated Monday afternoon, the Bay Area NWS office said the windiest conditions are expected in terrain above 1,000 feet in the North Bay mountains, the East Bay Hills and the Diablo Range to the south. Winds are expected to increase to 20 to 30 mph with gusts from 35 to 45 mph. The highest points in the region, such as Mount Diablo in Contra Costa County and Mount Saint Helena on the Lake-Sonoma-Napa county border, could see gusts as high as 60 mph, forecasters say.
As the potential blackouts approach, the utility activated an online address lookup tool that will allow customers to see whether a power shutoff is under consideration for their area.
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