LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – Pacific Gas and Electric said Wednesday evening that it was continuing to shut off power to customers in parts of the state because of fire weather conditions that are still developing, with hopes that the process to begin restoring power to dozens of counties could begin as early as Thursday.

Lake County was among dozens of counties that had their power cut early Wednesday as part of the public safety power shutoff, as Lake County News has reported.

Power to more than 513,000 customers – including 37,439 in Lake County – was shut down in response to a red flag alert issued by the National Weather Service.

Those numbers do not account for the actual number of Californians impacted, as they only represent customer accounts, PG&E said.

The continuing forecast for heavy winds led PG&E to move forward with the second phase of the shutoff event, which had been delayed for several hours on Wednesday due to a change in conditions.

PG&E said that second phase impacted approximately 234,000 customers in Alameda, Alpine, Contra Costa, Mariposa, San Joaquin, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Santa Cruz, Stanislaus and Tuolumne, with 800 customers in Mendocino County added.

The outages occurred in two waves, with the East Bay, South Bay and Santa Cruz impacted later in the night, PG&E said.

Scott Strenfel, a PG&E principal meteorologist, said they are continuing to monitor the wind storm, which is expected to move into Southern California from Thursday to Friday, creating Santa Ana winds.

“This is a total California wide fire weather event,” Strenfel said.

Strenfel said north winds were traveling down the Sacramento Valley, with wind speeds of 50 miles per hour tracked in the Redding area.

Santa Ana wind events historically are the cause of the most destructive wildland fires in California, said Strenfel, noting that the current situation is a high risk event and they are monitoring the company’s 600 weather monitoring stations.

Sumeet Singh, vice president of asset and risk management and the Community Wildfire Safety Program, said in some limited areas, where they could reconfigure the electrical system, they have been able to turn power back on for customers.

Later on Wednesday night, PG&E said 50,000 customers in the Sierra Foothills area had power reported.

Also on Wednesday night, the company said improving weather meant that patrols in some areas of Humboldt County had started, with PG&E anticipating being able to restore power to between 60,000 and 80,000 customers during the night or by early Thursday morning.

An expected shutdown to 43,000 customers in the Kern County area also was reduced to 4,000 customers, the company reported.

Singh said the peak of the weather event impacting Lake County and other counties across Northern and Central California is expected late Wednesday to early Thursday.

Once that event is past and the all-clear is given, Singh said the company has 45 helicopters and 6,300 ground personnel ready to start inspections of power lines before reenergizing the system.

Later Wednesday, PG&E spokeswoman Jennifer Robison told Lake County News that the all-clear call for the shutoff event will be weather-dependent, but weather forecasts show the weather event is expected to last through midday Thursday.

Singh said that due to the large outage area and potential for damage, it could take several days to restore power to customers. He added that they can only perform visual safety inspections during daylight hours.

He said 800,000 PG&E customers had been impacted throughout the event so far, but as of Wednesday evening, that overall number had been reduced to between 600,000 to 650,000 thanks to being able to reenergize some areas through system reconfigurations.

Also on Wednesday evening, Laurie Giammona, PG&E’s senior vice president and chief customer officer, said the company is rolling out a new Web site at https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/16f9f52a1a874fa79fc1cc955d4de5a7  to provide customers with information after their main site was overwhelmed by traffic beginning on Tuesday.

Giammona said the company also has established 28 customer resource centers in impacted counties – Lake’s is located at the Clearlake Senior Center – where people can get water and information, charge small devices and have wifi access. She said five more center are to open at 8 a.m. Thursday.

Email Elizabeth Larson at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. . Follow her on Twitter, @ERLarson, or Lake County News, @LakeCoNews.