Red Flag Warning issued across Bay Area for critical fire weather conditions
Critical fire weather conditions were building across the Bay Area, prompting a Red Flag Warning for the region beginning Tuesday.
The National Weather Service said the warning was in effect for all interior Bay Area zones, the city of San Francisco, the Peninsula Coast, the Bay Shoreline, and higher terrains of the Central Coast from 11 a.m. Tuesday through 7 a.m. Thursday.
Strong winds from a high-pressure system in the Pacific Northwest have combined with low humidity to create the conditions triggering the warning.
The Weather has also issued a Wind Advisory from 4 p.m. Tuesday through 3 p.m. Wednesday for the North Bay interior mountains where winds of 30 to 40 mph are expected along with gusts of up to 60 mph. Higher gusts of up to 70 mph could also be present above 2,500 feet.
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Daytime relative humidity was expected to drop as low as 15% on Tuesday, and the Weather Service said although recent rainfall will help alleviate fire weather concerns in the short term, the dry winds will help cure the fuels in advance of a second offshore wind event beginning Tuesday evening.
The Red Flag Warning led to the closure of the polling place in Oakland's Joaquin Miller Park due to the entire park being shut down by the warning.
The fire weather conditions also prompted Pacific Gas and Electric to warn some 15,000 customers in Northern California their power could be shut off for public safety beginning on Tuesday evening.
Statewide, about 22,000 customers in 17 counties could lose power during the shutoffs, according to PG&E.
Around the Bay Area, PG&E has notified nearly 5,000 customers in Solano County; about 4,600 in Napa County; about 2,450 in Alameda County; 1,240 in Contra Costa County; nearly 1,600 in Santa Clara County; and just over 1,900 in Sonoma County.
The duration of the shutoffs will depend on the weather, and not all customers will be affected for the entire period.
PG&E officials said they have been working with state and local election officials to prepare for Election Day.
No tabulation centers are within the possible shutoff areas, but there are five polling locations in three counties that could be affected, however, and PG&E is staging temporary generation at those sites.
"We're taking extraordinary measures to prevent outages at voting and tabulation centers, and pre-staging resources to quickly restore any service outages," said Mark Quinlan, PG&E Senior Vice President, Wildfire, Emergency and Operations.
Customers can check online to see if their location is being monitored for the potential PSPS at www.pge.com/pspsupdates.
