A powerful blizzard in the Sierra Nevada mountains was expected to wane Sunday, but more heavy snow is on the way. The National Weather Service said that conditions would improve as winds weakened during the day, but that precipitation would quickly return, with heavy snow in some areas and rainfall in others, the AP reports. That wouldn't be much of a break after a multiday storm that one meteorologist called "as bad as it gets" closed a key east-west freeway in northern California, shut down ski resorts, and left thousands of homes and businesses without power.
By Sunday morning, Pacific Gas & Electric had restored power to all but about 7,000 California customers, while NV Energy had reduced its number to roughly 1,000 homes and businesses. Some ski areas were planning to reopen, albeit with delayed start times and limited operations. "We aren't outta the woods just yet," officials at Sierra at Tahoe posted on the resort's website. Palisades Tahoe, the largest resort on the north end of Lake Tahoe and site of the 1960 Winter Olympics, closed all chairlifts Saturday because of snow, wind, and low visibility. It planned to reopen Sunday after getting an estimated 5 feet of snow on the upper mountain as of Saturday night. "We will be digging out for the foreseeable future," officials said on the resort's blog.
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 east-west freeway. He called the storm an "extreme blizzard" for the Sierra Nevada but said he didn't expect records to be broken, per the AP. "It's certainly just about as bad as it gets in terms of the snow totals and the winds," Churchill said.
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