As California braced for critical fire conditions starting Thursday afternoon, Pacific Gas and Electric Co. officials said. that a fast-moving storm that brought rain in some locations helped planners reduce the number of counties and customers experiencing public safety power outages over the weekend to about 20,000. customers.

PG&E said late Wednesday that the possible technical outages could begin as early as 1 p.m. in rural areas of the Sacramento Valley and Bay Area, before strong winds could extend the shutoffs to 24 counties by Saturday.

The utility said “significant wet rainfall” in the Sierra Nevada “provided a welcome boost to dead fuel moisture levels and relative humidity in these areas.”

“As a result of these favorable conditions, PG&E has excluded nine counties and more than 10,000 customers from the scope of this PSPS event,” the company said.

The counties removed were: Alpine, Amador, Calaveras, El Dorado, Nevada, Placer, San Luis Obispo, Sierra and Tuolumne.

A so-called PSPS event is triggered by PG&E when forecasts indicate fire conditions due to a combination of high winds, dry vegetation and high temperatures.

Warmer winds from the Great Basin — often called Diablo winds — are now the primary concern for meteorologists as most of Northern California is under a National Weather Service red flag warning beginning Thursday at 11 p.m. and lasting until 5 p.m. Saturday. takes.

Northeasterly winds across the Sacramento Valley from the Delta to Redding are expected to reach 15 to 20 mph with gusts as high as 55 mph along the western tier of the Valley in places outside of Winters, Willows and Red Bluff. Combined with dry conditions – humidity of 25% or less and poor nighttime humidity – wind can cause a spark to spread quickly.

PG&E has faced constant criticism in recent years for engineering shutoffs to prevent its equipment from causing fires under extreme conditions.

“Our overarching goal is to stop catastrophic wildfires by proactively turning off power in certain areas when extreme weather threatens our electrical grid,” the company said. “We recognize that PSPS outages cause hardships for our customers and communities. Our sole focus is to keep our customers safe.”

In which provinces can PSPS outages occur?

While foothill counties east of the capital region have been removed from the list of possible outages, the “remaining counties under coverage remain on hold status,” the utility’s forecasters said.

Provinces that could be affected by a PSPS outage on Thursday are:

• Alameda: 422 customers (24 Medical Baseline customers)

• Colusa District: 606 (30)

• Contra Costa County: 973 (59)

• Glenn County: 508 (21)

• Lake County: 1,088 (83)

• Mendocino County: 13 (4)

• Napa County: 3,103 customers (135)

• Santa Clara County: 663 (41)

• Shasta County: 2,407(194)

• Solano County: 1,838 (159)

• Sonoma County: 1,010 (23)

• Tehama County: 2,056 (199)

• Yolo County: 262 (15)

Most of the counties on this list remained unchanged from PG&E’s original plans, although Napa on Tuesday increased fivefold from the company’s estimate that about 650 customers could be excluded. Lake County also increased from just 168 customers in the previous estimate and the number of Shasta payers doubled.

On Friday, when winds are forecast to be strongest, PG&E could call for outages in those counties and expand to 11 more:

• Butte County: 1,153 homes and businesses (87 Medical Baseline customers)

• Fresno County: 1,235 (75)

• Lake County: 1,088 (83)

• Madera County: 1,310 (109)

• Mariposa County: 640 (15)

• Merced region: 27 (0)

• Monterey County: 597 (21)

• Plumas Province: 316 (11)

• San Benito Province: 24 (0)

• Santa Barbara County: 155 (4)

• Santa Cruz Province: 132 (8)

• Stanislaus District: 27 (0)

The utility said the outages, if they occurred, would affect a small number of customers in each province, mostly in rural or remote areas or in areas adjacent to the transmission network. In total, as many as 20,565 homes and businesses — less than 1% of the company’s estimated 5.5 million electric bills — could be left in the dark for several hours until conditions improve and PG&E crews can inspect the grid.

“Because each weather situation is unique, we carefully assess a combination of factors when deciding whether to turn off power,” the report said.

If the PSPS is implemented, it would be the fourth wave this year for the Oakland-based electricity provider, which has been blamed for causing several wildfires across the region, including the deadliest fire in state history.

The latest outages could come two weeks after the latest round of potential outages, which left fewer than 10,000 ratepayers in the northern Sacramento Valley in the dark to protect infrastructure.

Utility blamed for past wildfires

PG&E has imposed planned power shutoffs in recent years due to terrible wildfire weather. The utility’s equipment is blamed for causing some of the worst fires in state history, including the 2018 Camp Fire that destroyed Paradise, and PG&E Corp. has been found liable for billions of dollars worth of destruction.

The utility has been blamed for causing more than 30 wildfires since 2017, fires that destroyed more than 23,000 homes and businesses and killed more than 100 people. Since then, PG&E has worked to underground many power lines in fire-prone areas, which it says is the most effective way to reduce fire risk and make California’s power grid more resilient to climate change by leading to a notable reduction in the number of wildfires this year . season.

According to Cal Fire, more than 1 million acres have burned in California this year due to nearly 6,900 different wildfire incidents, although none were attributed to the utility in 2024.

More information about the potential PSPS and how to receive alerts is available on PG&E’s website.