On Wednesday morning, PG&E issued an "all clear" for the most recent wind event in the North Bay and the Public Safety Power Shutoff (PSPS) that impacted a broad swath of Northern California.

Inspections and power restoration are beginning as we speak in Napa and Sonoma counties, where all of the affected Bay Area residents live, and the lights will start coming back on Wednesday afternoon.

Approximately 172,000 customers lost power in 22 counties, though, and more than 3,000 PG&E personnel will patrol and inspect some 10,750 miles of transmission and distribution power lines today, as ABC 7 reports. In some cases, PG&E has said power will be restored by 2 p.m., and most everyone should have power back on by Wednesday night.

This was the first big PSPS of the fire season, and it is doubtfully the last. PG&E cut power to households and businesses, particularly in mountain areas, early Tuesday morning in order to prevent fires being sparked during an uptick in Diablo Winds across the region. The power went off in parts of Alpine, Amador, Butte, Calaveras, El Dorado, Humboldt, Kern, Lake, Lassen, Mariposa, Napa, Nevada, Placer, Plumas, Shasta, Sierra, Siskiyou, Sonoma, Tehama, Trinity, Tuolumne, and Yuba counties.

In the Bay Area, the power shutoff seemed to have been successful and no new fires were reported Tuesday or Wednesday.

The winds still contributed to a major flare-up in the Bear Fire on Tuesday morning in Plumas County. The fire is one of several that are part of the North Complex fires, which were sparked along with the other lightning-caused complex fires in the Bay Area and Mendocino County on August 16 and 17.

As KCRA reports, the flare-up in the Bear fire spread the fire southwest and dangerously close to the city of Oroville. Several smaller mountain towns were under evacuation orders as the fire came their direction. The overall North Complex Fire, because it's burning in Plumas National Forest, is being managed by the National Forest Service. It is 38-percent contained as of Wednesday, having burned over 150,000 acres in four weeks.

Photo: Callum Shaw