SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Pacific Gas & Electric turned off electricity Wednesday for about 120,000 people in Northern California to prevent power lines from sparking wildfires during a new bout of windy, warm weather.

The nation’s largest utility lowered the number people affected from 375,000 after rain and humidity reduced the fire threat. About 35,000 others were told they could lose power later Wednesday if the weather doesn’t improve, PG&E spokeswoman Ari Vanrenen said.

Those who lose power were expected to get it back Thursday.

Forecasts called for it to be dry and winds to gust up to 55 mph (89 kph), which could fling tree branches or other debris into power lines, causing sparks that could set catastrophic fires, PG&E officials said. A virtually rainless fall has left brush bone dry.

The blackout is the latest in a series of massive outages by PG&E, including one last month that plunged nearly 2.5 million people into darkness and outraged officials and customers as overkill.

Officials accused the company of using the blackouts as a crutch after years of failing to update its infrastructure to withstand fire weather. PG&E equipment has caused some of California’s most destructive wildfires in recent years.

PG&E CEO Andy Vesey acknowledged the outages have been “terribly disruptive” and said the company is taking steps to avoid them in the future but that for now, “we won’t roll the dice on public safety.”

Meanwhile, California regulators are demanding answers from wireless, internet and landline providers whose equipment failed during the earlier outages, leaving hundreds of thousands of people without a way to get emergency alerts or make 911 calls.