High temperatures and winds expected throughout week

Spare the Air alert lifted, but advisory remains with power outages possible

Winds will be on the rise along with Bay Area temperatures this week, once again creating the threat of wildfires and the possibility that residents in the region could lose power.

But at least the air is better. A Spare the Air alert that reached 15 straight days on Sunday ended Monday morning, replaced instead by an advisory, Bay Area Air Quality Management District spokeswoman Kristin Roselius said. The district has issued 49 Spare the Air alerts this year, a record for a calendar year.

The temperatures are expected to increase steadily this week, with National Weather Service meteorologist Anna Schneider saying they will rise into the lower 90s in the hottest places by Wednesday and then into the upper 90s by Friday. She also said there is a possibility that there “may be a few isolated places where it hits 100.”

PG& E warned customers of a possible Public Safety Power Shutoff on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. The utility had listed eight of the nine Bay Area counties — San Francisco County was the exception — in its zones under a PSPS watch that will be in effect on Wednesday and Thursday, as well as in areas outside the Bay Area on Friday.

The category is one up from the “elevated” chance of a PSPS that was in effect at the start of Monday.

“To be clear, we have no power shutdowns scheduled at this point,” PG& E spokeswoman Tamar Sarkissian said Monday. “These areas are just under a watch.”

Should a shutdown occur, she said, it may affect pockets of residents in the East Bay near Mount Diablo, as well as those in the Oakland hills east of Piedmont through Highway 24 and into the upper San Leandro reservoir area.

Residents in portions of the Santa Cruz mountains and in the North Bay mountains near Mount Saint Helena also may lose power if a shutoff comes, Sarkissian said.

“It’s not expected to be a widespread event,” she said.

The high winds that brought the PSPS possibility also brought a fire weather watch from the National Weather Service for the East Bay hills, Santa Cruz mountains and North Bay mountains.

Fire crews made enough significant progress on the Glass Fire in Napa and Sonoma counties (95% contained) and the August Complex fires in Mendocino, Humboldt, Trinity, Tehama, Glenn, Lake and Colusa

counties (75% contained) through the weekend that the fires “didn’t produce as much smoke as anticipated,” district spokeswoman Kristine Roselius said.

“That’s great news for us,” she said. “It’s allowing us to lift the alerts.”

The fire weather watch begins at 5 a.m. Wednesday and lasts through 11 a.m. Friday, and climate expert Daniel Swain said on Twitter that the conditions could elevate into those warranting a red flag warning for fire danger.

By Wednesday, wind gusts could get up to 3040 mph in most places and could hit 50 mph in some of the region’s highest peaks, Schneider said.

“A low-pressure trough will be sliding into the Great Ba sin a rea on Wednesday, and we have that high pressure building along the coast,” she said. “That combination is going to bring the wind, and they’ll be blowing in a north to northeast direction.”