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 up to 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 whiteout conditions in the mountains, ski resorts in the Lake Tahoe area suspended operations. And highway officials closed Interstate 80, the main artery that crosses the Sierra Nevada over Donner Peak, a key truck route from the San Francisco Bay Area. Traffic cameras revealed semi-trucks parked alongside the freeway, waiting for the night to close.
California Highway Patrol he said there was no estimated time for the highway to reopen.
The Central Sierra Snow Laboratory, a research station located atop Donner Summit, reported that 20.7 inches of snow had fallen by Saturday morning and that 39.8 inches had fallen during the previous 48 hours. Palisades Tahoe, a resort that shut down ski operations Saturday for the entire 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 10:00 p.m. Friday night before his generator kicked in a few minutes later. Mr. Miller, who has lived in the Lake Tahoe area for nearly 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 massive mountain range that runs along the spine of California, forecasters rated the avalanche danger as high and expected avalanche dangers to worsen during the day due to new snow and continued winds. On Friday night, winds reached 171 miles per hour.
Several avalanches were reported in the backcountry Friday, according to public comments on the Sierra Avalanche Center’s website, including at least one partial burial — a skier was caught when snow buried him up to his shoulders but 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 by digging out amid the steady snowfall.
Autumn Worden, 28, plowed her four-wheel-drive Subaru through deep snow ruts. “I was rocking and rolling on my way out of my neighborhood,” said Ms. Worden, a barista at a coffee shop in Stateline, Nev., just east of South Lake Tahoe.
“I managed to work though,” he said, adding that there was about a foot of snow on the roads when he left this morning.
Bryan Allegretto, a Tahoe-area forecaster with OpenSnow, called it a “powerful storm.” “We usually see a storm of this size once or twice a year.”
Mr Allegretto, who had been up since 4.30am on Saturday morning collecting data, said he believed the snow totals showed less than some of the national forecasts had predicted because wind can significantly reduce snow. snowfall.
For Sunday, National Weather Service forecasters said heavy snow is likely in the morning, with total accumulation for the day of three to nine inches. Wind gusts could reach 50 mph
The storm disrupted plans for several events. A 26km cross-country ski race was cancelled. 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 Snowfest tradition, was postponed a week.
Some residents, however, were determined not to let the snow disrupt their plans. Brendan Madigan, owner of Alpenglow Sports, an outdoor goods store in Tahoe City, won’t be closing up shop. “We’re very proud to be open,” he said. “We feel like we have resilient customers — it’s the mountains — and we have a responsibility to be here if people need us.”
Mr. Madigan said many recent customers at the store shopped specifically for the storms. Because the ski area is closed, he said, “most people do retail therapy.”
And although the Snowfest parade has been canceled, the parade’s after-party, called Blizzardfest, has been moved to Sunday afternoon and will be held outdoors at a local beer garden. Saturday afternoon, it was still snowing heavily in Tahoe City. But Katie Biggers, executive director of the Tahoe City Downtown Association, still expects a good turnout.
“Tahoe locals always show up,” he said. “It’s all pretty rough.”