BLIZZARD HOWLS THROUGH SIERRA NEVADA MOUNTAINS
TRUCKEE, Calif. — A powerful blizzard that a meteorologist termed “as bad as it gets” howled in the Sierra Nevada mountains, closing a long stretch of Interstate 80 in Northern California, forcing ski resorts to shut down, and leaving thousands of homes without power.
More than 10 feet 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 east-west 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 Sunday would range from 5 to 12 feet, with the highest accumulations at elevations above 5,000 feet. 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.”
A second, weaker storm was forecast to bring an additional 1 to 2 feet of snow in the region between Monday and Wednesday next week, according to the National Weather Service office in Sacramento.
Near Lake Tahoe, Thomas Petkanas, a bartender at Alibi Ale Works in Incline Village, Nevada, said about 3 feet of snow had fallen by midday Saturday. He said patrons shook off snow as they arrived at the 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.”
Palisades Tahoe, the largest resort on the north end of Tahoe and site of the 1960 Winter Olympics, closed all chairlifts Saturday because of snow, wind and low visibility.
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 100 mph.