Lamorinda Outage Caused By High Winds: PG&E

LAMORINDA, CA — High winds caused a widespread outage Thursday, impacting an Orinda intersection for much of the day, according to PG&E and the Orinda Police Department.

Police advised the public of the outage that started at 11:47 a.m. and affected traffic light signals at Camino Pablo and El Toyonal.

At the peak, 992 customers were affected, PG&E Spokesperson Tamar Sarkissian told Patch.

"We were able to restore the majority of our customers by 6:11 p.m., and all customers were restored by 7:18 p.m., safely and as quickly as possible," Sarkissian said.

"The cause of this outage were the high winds."

Amid dry and warm conditions over the last 48 hours, the top wind speed on Mt. Diablo was 72 mph, the second highest in the Bay Area behind Mt. St. Helena where peak winds reached 75 mph, according to the National Weather Service.

Strong winds were expected to continue through Friday at the higher elevations but ease at the lower elevations and valleys of the East Bay. Several locations around the Bay Area were still gusting 25-25 mph Friday, the weather service said.

Overnight humidity recoveries were expected to be reduced again overnight Friday but improve as winds cut off into the weekend.