PG&E officials announced Monday evening that they expect another Diablo or high wind event to impact the Bay Area and state. In the Bay Area, the event is expected to start Tuesday morning. The officials said they expect to issue an all clear roughly between 4 am and 10 am Wednesday.
PG&E meteorologist Scott Strenfel said compared with Sunday’s event, winds in Tuesday’s event will be weaker but the fuels will be dryer.
“This will be a very high risk event,” he said.
Multiple Red Flag Warnings have been issued covering a vast portion of the Bay Area. That area has about 2 million PG&E customers in it. PG&E isn’t sure how many customers will be affected by the coming shutoff. As of Monday evening, they were estimating between 240,000 and 605,000 customers.
Strenfel said there is some good news. After Wednesday, weather models do not show another inclement wind event at least through the first week of November.
“Still no rain in the forecast, “he said, “but it appears we are going to be entering a more quiescent weather pattern.”
Keith Stephens, a spokesperson for PG&E, brought some bad news. He said a contractor working for the utility died Friday night when his vehicle went over a large elevated area in Humboldt County.