- Elizabeth Larson
- Posted On
Red flag warning issued for Lake County; PG&E to decide Wednesday on public safety power shutoff
The red flag warning is in effect from noon on Wednesday until 11 a.m. Friday, the National Weather Service said.
The forecast calls for a high-pressure ridge that will build across the area from mid to late week, bringing warmer and drier conditions along with gusty offshore winds to higher elevations.
Forecasters said upper slope and ridgetop winds from the northeast to east are expected to range from 15 to 25 miles per hour, with locally higher gusts to 35 miles per hour. The strongest winds will occur around sunrise on Thursday. Humidity will be low during the day and night.
The Lake County forecast calls for daytime temperatures topping out in the high 90s into the weekend, when temperatures are expected to drop into the 80s and then into the 70s early next week. Nighttime temperatures will reach the 60s before dropping into the 50s at week’s end and the 40s in the new week.
PG&E began notifying customers on Monday of the potential for a public safety power shutoff, and on Tuesday night said that it’s expanded the scope of the potential shutoff area from portions of 21 to 24 counties, with a total of 54,000 customers in the area.
The number of Lake County residents that would be impacted rose from a previous estimate of 50 to 82, with five of them medical baseline customers, PG&E said.
A map of the proposed outage area shows that Lake County residents to be impacted are in the Lower Lake, Middletown and Cobb areas.
Officials said they will make the decision on Wednesday whether or not to go forward with the shutoff.
If the shutoff goes forward, PG&E said the majority of customers should have power restored by the end of the day on Friday.
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