Massive blizzard howls in northern California
TRUCKEE, California — A powerful blizzard that a meteorologist termed “as bad as it gets” howled into the Sierra Nevada mountains, closing a long stretch of Interstate 80 in Northern California, forcing ski resorts to shut down, and leaving tens of thousands of homes without power.
More than three metres of snow was expected at higher elevations, National Weather Service meteorologist William Churchill said Saturday, creating a “life-threatening concern” for residents near Lake Tahoe and blocking travel on the key eastwest freeway.
“It’s a blizzard,” said Dubravka Tomasin, a resident of Truckee, California, for more than a decade. “It’s pretty harrowing.”
Kyle Frankland, a veteran snow plow driver, said several parts of his rig broke as he cleared wet snow underneath piles of powder.
“I’ve been in Truckee 44 years. This is a pretty good storm,” Frankland said. “It’s not record-breaking by any means, but it’s a good storm.”
Churchill said snow totals by late today would range from 1.5 to 3.6 metres, with the highest accumulations at elevations above 1,500 metres. Lower elevations were inundated with heavy rain.
He called the storm an “extreme blizzard for the Sierra Nevada, in particular, as well as other portions of Nevada and even extending into Utah and portions of western Colorado.” But he said he didn’t expect records to be broken.
“It’s certainly just about as bad as it gets in terms of the snow totals and the winds,” Churchill said. “It doesn’t get much worse than that.”
Thomas Petkanas, a bartender at Alibi Ale Works in Incline Village, Nevada, said about one metre of snow had fallen by midday Saturday. He said patrons shook off snow as they arrived at the Lake Tahoe brewpub and restaurant. “It’s snowing pretty hard out there, really windy, and power is out to about half the town,” Petkanas said by telephone. “We’re one of the few spots open today.”
Earlier, the weather service warned that blowing snow was creating “extremely dangerous to impossible” driving conditions, with wind gusts in the high mountains at more than 160 km/h. Avalanche danger was “high to extreme” in backcountry areas through this evening throughout the central Sierra and greater Lake Tahoe area, the weather service said.
California authorities on Friday shut down 160 kilometres of I-80, the main route between Reno and Sacramento, due to “spin outs, high winds, and low visibility.” There was no estimate when the freeway would reopen from the California-Nevada border west of Reno to near Emigrant Gap, California.
Travel was treacherous east of the Sierra, where CalTrans also cited “multiple spin outs and collisions” and “whiteout conditions,” as it closed 145 kilometres of U.S. 395 from near Bishop in the Owens Valley to Bridgeport, north of Mono Lake.
Pacific Gas & Electric reported about 15,500 California homes and businesses without power about 1:30 p.m. NV Energy reported power outages for about 850 customers in and around Incline Village, and more than 2,000 customers without electricity in other parts of northern Nevada.
In southern Nevada, where the weather service issued a warning Saturday for high winds gusting to 145 km/h, NV Energy reported almost 29,000 customers without power in and around Las Vegas.
A tornado Friday afternoon in Madera County, California, caused some damage to an elementary school, said Andy Bollenbacher, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Hanford.
Some ski resorts shut down Friday and were digging out Saturday with an eye toward reopening today.
Palisades Tahoe, the largest resort on the north end of Tahoe and site of the 1960 Winter Olympics, closed all chairlifts Saturday due to snow, wind and low visibility. Other areas closed Saturday included Sugar Bowl, Boreal and Sierra.