Two dead as snow storms, outages slam NorCal foothills
Intense winter storms have piled feet of snow down to low elevations in California for the past two weeks, upending life for thousands of residents across the Sierra Nevada foothills.
Their daily struggles have ranged from long power outages and extended school closures to hours of shoveling before residents can leave their driveways.
At their worst, the recent storms have turned deadly.
An 80-year-old Foresthill woman died Feb. 28 when part of her porch collapsed under the weight of snow; the National Weather Service recorded close to 4 feet of snow in the preceding days. Two days later, in the El Dorado County town of Camino, a 62-year-old resident was found dead on the ground in the snow, near a vehicle, sheriff’s officials said.
For many others, the storms’ disruptions have been long and lingering amid one of the most relentless stretches of snowfall they can remember.
“It’s just been day after day after day,” said Lauren Anglin, who works at the Dutch Flat Trading Post on the town’s Main Street. “It’s hard to just get out of your driveway and get to work. We have a lot of older residents that live here, and they’re having to struggle.”
Snowfall is already bordering on historic. California Department of Water Resources officials, during a snow survey last week at Phillips Station, said the current winter is on pace to threaten the 1982-83 record for statewide snowpack level.
Continued snow in the past few days have helped that campaign: State water officials as of Wednesday morning reported statewide snowpack at 192% of average for the date, and 196% of average in the central Sierra range.
High elevations have seen astonishing amounts of powder, with the Sugar Bowl and Palisades Tahoe ski resorts tallying 5 feet and 3 feet of snow, respectively, in just 48 hours this past weekend.
But multiple feet of snow have also accumulated at elevations thousands of feet lower than those resorts, in parts of the foothills along the Interstate 80 and Highway 50 corridors that are used to getting snow, but not nearly this much.
Rooftop snow has been a serious concern, in both the mountains and foothills.
“Several commercial buildings have completely collapsed under the weight of snow,” the Georgetown Fire Department, which serves the El Dorado County town of nearly 3,000 residents, said in a Tuesday news release.
“Several canopies have also collapsed, including one of the fire department’s at our Buckeye station. In addition, several businesses on Main Street have had damage to the sidewalk overhangs and roof systems.”
Truckee Elementary was closed Tuesday and Truckee High closed through at least Wednesday, “due to the amount of snow accumulation” on the roof of each campus that may threaten cave-ins, TahoeTruckee Unified School District officials wrote.
The weather service urged residents to clear snow from their roofs if they can safely do so — especially with a warmer storm system forecast to arrive late Thursday that will bring heavy rain to the foothills.
“Snow on roofs can absorb the rain and become even heavier,” the weather service’s Sacramento office tweeted Tuesday.
In addition to the risk of collapsing, snow can slide off rooftops suddenly, endangering people below, weather officials wrote.
In Nevada County, nearly 5,000 homes and businesses remained without power as of Wednesday morning, according to a Pacific Gas and Electric Co. outage map.
Nearly 2,000 of those customers, mostly in the Nevada City area, have been in the dark for more than a week.
Nevada County last Thursday proclaimed a local emergency due to widespread power outages and downed trees blocking roadways. El Dorado and Placer counties also declared local emergencies, each doing so last Friday.
Anglin, who works at the Dutch Flat store, lives in the Placer County town of Alta, about 5 miles from her job.