Storm knocks out power to 15,000

Nearly 15,000 PG&E customers in the Bay Area were without power Friday afternoon because of high winds and rain passing through the area, PG&E officials said.

Nearly 55,000 Bay Area customers have lost power during today’s storm. As of 4 p.m., around 14,800 remained without power in the area. Nearly half of those remaining customers, or 6,380, were in the East Bay.

About 5,800 were without power in the North Bay and 1,380 Peninsula customers were without power. In the South Bay, 490 were without power and in San Francisco, 700.

PG&E has about 1,160 personnel working to respond and restore service to affected customers, company officials said. The utility will be dispatching crews to areas most affected by the storm, which may mean the company has to delay or cancel scheduled work to respond to outages.

National Weather Service meteorologist Will Pi said the Bay Area is now experiencing moderate rain and the heaviest rain over the next six hours will be early this evening. Late tonight and Saturday the rain will taper off into showers.

A wind advisory is effect for the Bay Area until 4 a.m. Saturday, said National Weather Service forecaster Diana Henderson. Weather officials are expecting winds of 30 to 40 mph through tonight. After midnight the winds will subside to 20 to 30 mph, but winds may gust to 45 mph, Henderson said.

By morning, forecasters are expecting winds of 10 to 20 mph.