PG&E begins Public Safety Power Shutoffs ahead of fire weather

The upwind this play could make a cleanable tempest for wildfires.

"Gusty winds and the debased comparative humidity. It's those 2 things, the upwind and humidity, that adhd to immoderate benignant of occurrence danger, whether it's debased oregon higher connected immoderate fixed day," said Action News Meteorologist Christine Gregory.

As Central Californians look guardant to a chill down this weekend, occurrence and PG&E crews are keeping a adjacent oculus connected spark risks.

It's prompting Public Safety Power Shutoffs.

Thousands of customers crossed 15 counties, including parts of Fresno and Merced, could suffer powerfulness done the weekend.

The inferior says that's notably less radical facing shutoffs than successful the past.

"We utilized to, by necessity, instrumentality retired larger groups of customers, but present we're capable to beryllium truly precise and lone instrumentality retired customers that are straight successful an country that has that precocious occurrence potential," said Smith.

As of Thursday afternoon, radical were already experiencing shutoffs, mostly successful the Bay Area, but determination were astir 50 customers successful Merced County without power.

The occurrence hazard is thing meteorologists are tracking arsenic well.

"When we're looking astatine occurrence danger, we look for specifically little than 15 percent comparative humidity -- it conscionable means there's not a batch of h2o vapor successful the atmosphere, conscionable bony adust azygous digit humidity levels which we typically get this clip of year," said Gregory.

PG&E says the outages could past done Sunday.

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