Thousands are without power in California and Nevada amid heavy snowfall
Thousands of residents were without power, and for many in the Sierra Nevada region, life came to a standstill 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 electricity Saturday morning, according to to PowerOutage.us. Due to the whiteout conditions in the mountains, ski areas in the Lake Tahoe area have halted operations. And highway officials have closed Interstate 80, the main artery that crosses the Sierra Nevada via the Donner Summit, a major freight route from the San Francisco Bay Area. Traffic cameras revealed semi-trucks parked along the highway, waiting for the overnight closure.
California Highway Patrol said there was no estimated time for highway reopening.
The Central Sierra Snow Laboratory, a research station atop Donner Summit, reported that 60.7 centimeters of snow had fallen Saturday morning, and that an additional 39.8 centimeters of snow had fallen in the past 48 hours. Palisades Tahoe, a resort that closed all-terrain ski area operations on Saturday, reported 2 feet of new snow in the past 24 hours.
Yosemite National Park survived Closed at least until Sunday afternoon, park officials said.
On the eastern slopes of the Sierra Nevada, the enormous mountain range that runs along the spine of California, forecasters estimate the avalanche danger as high, and they expected the avalanche danger to increase during the day due to the new snow and persistent winds. Last night the wind reached a speed of 271 kilometers per hour.
Several avalanches were reported in the backcountry on Friday, according to public observations at the Sierra Avalanche Center website, including at least one partial burial – one skier was caught when snow buried him up to his shoulders, but he was dug out about 10 minutes later. No injuries or fatalities were reported.
In the morning in South Lake Tahoe, California, before snow plows could reach residential streets, some local residents had to fend for themselves to dig out amid the persistent snowfall.
Autumn Worden, 28, plowed her four-wheel-drive Subaru through deep snow gullies. “I was rocking and rolling when I left my neighborhood,” said Ms. Worden, a barista at a coffee roaster in Stateline, Nevada, just east of South Lake Tahoe.
“But I did get to work,” she said, adding that there was about a foot of snow on the roads this morning.
Meteorologists began sounding the alarm earlier this week about “life-threatening snowstorms” expected in the Sierra Nevada through Sunday.
However, some residents were determined not to let the snow disrupt their plans.
Brendan Madigan, owner of Alpenglow Sports, an outdoor gear store in Tahoe City, will not be closing his store. “We are very proud to be open,” he says. “We feel like we have regular customers – it’s the mountains – and we have a responsibility to be here when people need us.”
Mr Madigan said many recent customers have made storm-specific purchases at the store. “Most people are doing retail therapy because the ski area is closed,” he said.