Thousands of residents were without power and life came to a standstill for many in the Sierra Nevada region Saturday after a winter storm dumped as much as two feet of snow overnight and created treacherous conditions.
About 49,000 customers in Nevada and California were without power Saturday, according to PowerOutage.us. With sunny conditions in the mountains, ski resorts in the Lake Tahoe area have shut down. And highway officials shut down Interstate 80, the main artery that crosses the Sierra Nevada above Donner Peak, a key route for trucking from the San Francisco Bay Area. Traffic cameras revealed semi trucks parked along the freeway awaiting the overnight closure.
California Highway Patrol said there was no estimated time for the highway to reopen.
The Sierra Central Snow Lab, a research station located atop Donner, reported that 20.7 inches of snow had fallen by Saturday morning and that 39.8 inches had fallen in the 48 hours leading up to it. Palisades Tahoe, a resort that closed ski area operations Saturday to all terrain, reported 24 inches of new snow in the past 24 hours.
Yosemite National Park remained closed until at least noon Sunday, park officials said.
Ed Miller, a resident of Tahoma on the west shore of Lake Tahoe, said he lost power around 10 p.m. Friday night before his generator kicked in a few minutes later. Mr. Miller, who has lived in the Lake Tahoe area for almost 50 years, is used to power outages. He said having a generator is essential to life in the mountains, where gusts of wind knock branches off trees and down power lines on a regular basis.
On the eastern slopes of the Sierra Nevada, the huge mountain range that runs along California’s spine, forecasters rated the avalanche danger high and expected the avalanche danger to worsen during the day due to new snow and continued winds. Winds reached 171 miles per hour Friday night.
Several avalanches were reported in the province on Friday, according to public observations on the Sierra Avalanche Center’s website, including at least one partial burial — a skier was trapped when snow buried him up to his shoulders, but he was dug out about 10 minutes later. No injuries or deaths were reported.
This morning in South Lake Tahoe, California, before snowplows could reach residential streets, some local residents had to fend for themselves to dig amid the steady snowfall.
Autumn Worden, 28, drove her four-wheel-drive Subaru through deep snow ditches. “I was swinging on my way out of my neighborhood,” said Ms. Worden, a barista at a coffee bakery in Stateline, Nev., just east of South Lake Tahoe.
“I still made it to work,” she said, adding that there was about a foot of snow on the roads when she left this morning.
Brian Allegretto, a Tahoe-area forecaster with OpenSnow, called it a “strong storm.” “We usually see a storm of this magnitude once or twice a year.”
Mr Allegreto, who had been awake since 4.30am on Saturday collecting data, said he believed the snow totals showed less than some of the national forecasts had predicted because wind could significantly reduce snowfall.
For Sunday, National Weather Service forecasters said heavy snow is likely in the morning with total accumulations for the day of three to nine inches. Wind gusts could reach 50 miles per hour
The storm disrupted plans for several events. They canceled a 26 km cross-country ski race. Organizers of the North Lake Tahoe Snowfest have canceled the event’s parade for the first time in its 42-year history. And the polar bear plunge into Lake Tahoe, a Snow Festival tradition, was postponed for a week.
However, some residents were determined not to let the snow get in the way of their plans. Brendan Madigan, owner of Alpenglow Sports, an outdoor gear store in Tahoe City, will not be closing his store. “We’re very proud of being open,” he said. “We feel like we have a resilient customer base – these are the mountains – and we have a responsibility to be here if people need us.”
Mr Madigan said many recent customers at the store had made storm-specific purchases. With the ski area closed, he said, “most people are doing retail therapy.”
And although the Snowfest parade was canceled, the after-parade party, called Blizzardfest, has been moved to Sunday afternoon and will be held outdoors at a local brewery. Heavy snow was still falling in Tahoe City Saturday afternoon. But Katie Biggers, executive director of the Tahoe City Downtown Association, still expects a good turnout.
“Tahoe locals always show up,” she said. “They’re all pretty healthy.”
