According to PG&E's latest projected outage map for the Public Safety Power Shutoff event beginning today, a large swath of the Sierra foothills will be impacted, as will around 27,000 power customers in Sonoma County.
PG&E continues to be less than specific about when the power may get cut for around 184,000 customers in 17 Northern California counties. As off 11 p.m. on Tuesday night they did update this list of cities expected to impacted, giving estimates of the number of customers likely to see their power go out. And there's now a new address lookup tool — which hopefully won't become non-functional! — to find out if your home or business will be affected.
As of now, PG&E says that 26,845 customers in Sonoma County and 7,488 customers in Napa County are expected to see shutoffs. Only 372 customers in San Mateo County will impacted, they now say, down from 900, which was the original estimate. Thus the shutoff area in San Mateo County isn't really visible until you zoom in on the map.
As SFGate notes, the National Weather Service's Red Flag Warning begins at noon Wednesday and goes through 4 p.m. on Thursday for the North Bay mountains and valleys. And the warning kicks in at 3 p.m. for the East Bay, and 7 p.m. for the Santa Cruz Mountains.
The largest numbers of customers to be affected are concentrated in Nevada, El Dorado, Butte, and Placer counties, including the area around Chico and Paradise that were hit by last year's devastating Camp Fire.
Shutoffs are expected to begin in the Sierra foothills around 2 p.m. today, as ABC 7 reports, and at 3 p.m. in Sonoma and Napa counties. San Mateo and Kern counties will likely be waiting until 1 a.m. for the lights to go out. But, again, these times are just estimates.
Wind gusts of up to 55 miles per hour are predicted in some locales, including the the highest elevations in Sonoma and Napa counties.
In related news, PG&E has rejected a proposal by Gov. Gavin Newsom to issue reimbursement credits to customers affected by the previous shutoffs two weeks ago, saying it would complicate their bankruptcy proceedings.