Pacific Gas and Electric Co. has placed seven Northern California counties — including four in the Sacramento Valley — on notice for possible public safety power shutoffs as early as Sunday as a red flag warning brings hot, dry and windy conditions to much of Northern California.
The National Weather Service said north winds could gust to 50 mph and humidity could drop as low as 7%, creating conditions that could rapidly spread wildfires through Monday evening. If outages are ordered, they would be PG&E’s first public safety power shutoffs of 2026. The utility’s most recent PSPS event occurred June 19, 2025, when PG&E cut power to more than 16,000 customers across 19 counties.
Here are key takeaways:
- PG&E has placed seven Northern California counties — Yolo, Colusa, Glenn, Lake, Napa, Sonoma and Tehama counties — on notice for possible PSPS as early as Sunday as hot, dry conditions and wind gusts of up to 50 mph increase wildfire risk.
- Sacramento residents are not affected by PG&E shutoffs because the Sacramento Municipal Utility District provides power to the county and does not implement wildfire shutoffs, and SMUD’s grid is not reliant on PG&E — SMUD’s 900-square-mile service territory is mostly urban and sits outside high-risk wildfire areas.
- PG&E’s equipment has been blamed for starting more than 30 wildfires since 2017 that destroyed more than 23,000 homes and businesses and killed more than 100 people, including the 2018 Camp Fire that devastated Paradise.
- The shutoffs are typically driven by “Diablo winds” — warm, dry winds from the Great Basin — and PG&E officials said their overarching goal is to stop catastrophic wildfires by proactively turning off power in targeted areas when extreme weather threatens the electric grid. This weekend’s winds will move from north to east, according to the weather service.
- Even after weather improves, power isn’t restored immediately: in a 2023 event, PG&E crews patrolled 589 miles of transmission and distribution lines using 78 ground personnel, 20 helicopters and two drones to check for damage before re-energizing customers.
- During shutoffs, PG&E opens community resource centers offering restrooms, blankets, water, snacks, Wi-Fi and charging stations for cellphones and small medical devices to help affected customers.
- PG&E says it has been undergrounding electricity lines in fire-prone areas — a strategy it calls the most effective way to reduce fire risk — and, as of October, the utility said it had completed and energized 1,000 miles of underground power lines in high fire-risk areas across 27 counties in Northern and Central California.
- PG&E said undergrounding, along with stronger poles and wires and line removals, has permanently reduced wildfire ignition risk by 8.4% across its system since 2023. The utility expects to have 1,600 miles of lines underground by the end of 2026, contributing to an estimated 18% reduction in systemwide wildfire risk.
- PG&E’s last round of public safety power shutoffs in June 2025 cut electricity to 16,223 customers across 19 counties, including parts of the Sacramento Valley and Central Coast, according to the utility’s post-event report to state regulators. PG&E notified 18,730 customers that they could lose power, but mitigation efforts allowed the utility to avoid shutting off electricity to more than 61,000 additional customers that were initially considered for outages.
Customers can check whether their address is being monitored for a possible public safety power shutoff by using PG&E’s online outage lookup tool at pge.com/pspsupdates. The site also includes a seven-day forecast, outage maps, preparation tips and information about community resource centers that PG&E opens during shutoffs…