PG&E begins restoring power to Bay Area customers as fire weather conditions improve

PG E on Friday began restoring power to several thousand Bay Area customers as improving weather conditions lowered the fire weather risk, the utility said.Public safety power outages in Alameda, Contra Costa, Napa, Solano and Sonoma counties, topped 11,000 on Thursday. Outages totaled nearly 90,000 across the state beginning on Wednesday. PG E said improving weather conditions meant that the utility expected to begin restoring service by Friday afternoon instead of the original Saturday afternoon estimate.A PG E spokesperson said that as of 5 p.m. Friday the outage totals were as follows:Alameda - 2,130Contra Costa - 43Napa - 2,592Sonoma - 1,092Total Bay Area outages - 5,857View PG E power outage mapSolano County had about thee dozen outages, and the spokesperson said that all had since been restored.A red flag warning from the National Weather Service expired earlier Friday, although moderate heat and hot conditions would linger into Saturday. Forecasters said the strong offshore win