When will Mother Nature strike again, putting us in the dark?  It’s hard to say during this storm-laden week.  Your faithful Montclair blogger can always tell when there have been recent power outages, based on what you’re searching to get here!  We think it’s time to reveal the best official place to check:  PG&E itself.

Today all is calm in Oakland, based on the map status a few minutes ago.  In this snapshot below, you can see eight outages reported with the cause unknown.  We assume the repairs are underway, and perhaps these residents near the Laurel won’t even know it happened – save the clocks gone awry.

When you visit PG&E’s status map, you’re able to track the Utility’s entire 70,000 square mile service area.  No matter what, there are always outages scattered across such a large footprint.  You would go ahead and select a city (Oakland) and, as needed, drill down to zip code (94611) to see what’s happening right now.

Of course, an online source has some natural flaws:  when the power’s out, it may be tough to go online.  With fingers crossed, we sometimes have cell phone service and hit the interweb to check outage times, causes, homes impacted and updates.  Pretty cool!

If you don’t have online access due to the outage,  then you may still reach PG&E the old fashioned way – by land-line phones operating off the grid.  Remember to have a telephone directly plugged in,  and not all hooked up to remote handsets depending on electricity.

PG&E has two toll-free numbers available to report any outage (800-743-5002) or to ask questions about outages (800-743-5000).  Keep ’em handy, especially during this stormy week.