In Bay Area, the weather outside is delightful
Although Sayre said it was a novel adventure, he admitted it wasn’t the best skiing — especially compared with his typical routes at Tahoe. But he said it was hard to beat the convenience.
“I don’t think I’ve ever left our home in Berkeley, gone skiing and had a 20-minute round trip,” he said. “It’s certainly better than the threehour [drive] from the Bay Area to Tahoe.”
Lower elevations saw only minor snowfall, often melting by the afternoon, but it still created roadway disruptions, including stuck vehicles and closed roads. In the mountains, where the snowfall was much heavier, there were also downed trees and power lines and major interstates closed. Many in the Santa Cruz Mountains got a hint Friday morning of what island life would be like: All major roads in and out of the area — Highways 17, 9 and 152 — were closed because of accidents or roadblocks.
For longtime Berkeley resident Julian Liu, Friday was a day he’d been awaiting for decades. Those of older generations often recalled the 1976 snow — possibly the last time the Bay Area had significant snowfall and the year he was born. So when he heard the storm was coming, he planned to wake up early to catch the snow, worried it might melt by later in the day.
But then, he said, “I almost didn’t get out of bed,” convinced there wouldn’t actually be snow. When his friends drove up toward Tilden Park just after 7 a.m., he said, they turned a corner, “and suddenly there was so much snow.”
“Lo and behold, we started seeing accumulation,” he said. “It looked like the Sierra.”
He said as they hiked to Vollmer Peak — the park’s highest peak at just under 2,000 feet — it started snowing even more.
“I was totally expecting just to see little patches, but it was definitely a so-called winter wonderland,” he said.
“It was like snow snow.”
Liu laughed as he recalled a trip the previous weekend with friends to the Sierra. His friends’ young kids were going to see snow for the first time. But they had to drive high up the mountain to reach the white stuff, and it turned out to be old, packed and icy.
“Today there’s so much more snow in Berkeley than there was when we were staying in the Sierra,” he said. “Fresh, powdery, beautiful.”
Liu wasn’t alone in the day’s excitement: People shared images online of accumulated snow across the region, in Napa, Los Gatos and parts of Marin.
Residents were warned Friday night, however, to take care amid hazardous conditions. The weather service issued a freeze warning for much of the Bay Area, warning that roads could again become dangerous and asking people not to travel into the mountains, if possible.