Over the past five days, more than 12 feet of snow has piled up in the Sierra range. Yet to the frustration of Lake Tahoe ski resorts and the many skiers and snowboarders they serve, extreme weather has shut down almost every resort over that time span.
On Sunday and Monday, all of Lake Tahoe’s 15 ski resorts were closed. It was the rain and high winds that were a major issue Sunday. On Monday, snow began dumping and the winds continued, combing for blizzard-like conditions.
A few Tahoe resorts opened on a limited basis Tuesday and Wednesday. But the region continued to get pummeled with snow and major corridors – Interstate 80, Highway 50, Highway 88 – were all shut down for large portions of time.
Complicating things even further, more than 20,000 Liberty Utilities customers were without power in the Tahoe area Wednesday afternoon. The loss of power, avalanche risks and some associated problems shut down most ski resorts once again.
Liberty Utilities announced that most of the service outages were on the north side of the lake and power was expected to return before the end of the day.
All of the Lake Tahoe ski resorts on the north side of the lake were closed Wednesday. Squaw Valley and neighboring Alpine Meadows posted a message on their website saying a power outage was the primary reason for the closure.
Good news also arrived Wednesday. Caltrans re-opened I-80 and Highway 50. The two-day shut down of I-80 was the longest in several years.
Since Saturday, two storms dumped up to 12 feet snow in the Sierra, the largest sustained period of snow in six years, according to the National Weather Service.
Squaw Valley and Alpine Meadows were reporting 164 inches (roughly 13½ feet) of snow in the first 11 days of January, and were on pace to break the monthly record. Also in north Tahoe, Northstar California had received 167 inches. In South Lake Tahoe, Heavenly Mountain was trying to dig out after getting an amazing 184 inches – a little more than 15 feet.
The silver lining is the Lake Tahoe ski resorts should be set up for an amazing holiday weekend. There will be tons of fresh powder as the resorts scrambled to open for the three-day Martin Luther King Day weekend. The weather should be partly cloudy with temperatures in the 30s on Saturday and Sunday.
“I can’t remember getting this much snow before a three-day weekend,” said Bryan Allegretto, a ski forecaster for the Open Snow website.
