PG&E cancels planned power shut-offs as officials issue new fire weather watch for North Bay

As PG&E canceled planned power outages because of calmer conditions than expected, forecasters Thursday issued a new fire weather watch set to take effect Sunday morning.

The new forecast puts parts of the region at elevated risk of having their power shut off to prevent Pacific Gas & Electric Co. equipment from sparking new fires, the utility said Thursday.

A final decision on whether and when power would be proactively switched off could come Friday or Saturday, the utility said.

The impending weather watch is scheduled to begin at 8 a.m. Sunday through 8 a.m. Tuesday and will cover most of the North Bay, parts of the East Bay, the Diablo Range and the Santa Cruz mountains, the National Weather Service said.

Offshore winds could range between 25 mph and 35 mph and gusts could exceed 70 mph during the period of hazardous fire weather, when conditions are forecast to remain hot and dry, the weather service said. That would be considerably stronger than the prediction for gusts up to 40 mph that prompted a red flag warning that ends Friday morning.

The watch could be upgraded to a red flag warning in the coming days if the risk for the hazardous conditions persists, said Brayden Murdock, a meteorologist with the weather service.

“When you get into these overnight conditions, maybe around midnight is when we could be seeing the strongest gusts,” Murdock said of the forecast. “Overnight, our dry conditions, they won’t have an opportunity to replenish that humidity. Even the overnight conditions are going to be pretty dry.”

Thursday’s weather watch announcement came as the region neared the end of a red flag warning that expires Friday at 8 a.m, the second of two such warnings enacted in the region this week thus far.

The most recent warning, which began Wednesday night, was followed by the announcement of planned outages for the North Bay Thursday morning, though those were called off after dangerous fire weather conditions were less severe than initially forecast.

More than 3,400 customers in the North Bay mountains across Sonoma and Napa counties had been slated to lose power as early as 3 a.m.

“The adverse weather that was expected didn’t materialize,” PG&E spokeswoman Mayra Tostado said.

Gusts reached about 25 mph in the North Bay overnight Wednesday, falling short of earlier forecasts that put maximum gust speeds during the red flag warning at 40 mph, Murdock said.

Roughly 32,000 customers in the Sacramento Valley and Sierra Nevada foothills were still affected by the shut-off.

About 74% of those customers had power restored as of 7:30 p.m. Thursday, the company said. Nearly all customers were expected to have their electricity returned by Friday at 10 p.m., Tostado said.

You can reach Staff Writer Nashelly Chavez at 707-521-5203 or nashelly.chavez@pressdemocrat.com and Yousef Baig at 707-521-5390 or yousef.baig@pressdemocrat.com.