Snow continued Thursday at Lake Tahoe ski resorts, who continue to revel in the large snow totals, thanks to all the sizable January storms.
And the snow will continue as well. The National Weather Service has issued a winter weather advisory that goes from Friday at 4 a.m. through Saturday at 10 a.m. That translates into 30 hours of perhaps heavy snow, predicted to be 2 feet and above at the highest peaks in the Sierra.
Friday could be a treacherous day for skiing and snowboarding, plus traveling as well. Besides the snow to contend with, winds could gust up to 45 mph at lake level and be double that amount on the Sierra ridges.
The three Vail Resorts – Heavenly Mountain, Northstar California, Kirkwood Mountain – were all reporting nice totals by Thursday morning. Northstar (12 lifts, 71 runs) received 16 inches over a 24-hour period. Kirkwood (13 lifts, 86 runs) had 14 inches and Heavenly (23 lifts, 91 runs) increased its snow total by 8 inches.
Sugar Bowl ski resort was the big winner from the latest storm with a reported 21 inches of snow Thursday morning on its upper mountain. A little further down Interstate-80, Boreal Mountain received 18 inches.
Mt. Rose, Homewood Mountain, Squaw Valley and Alpine Meadows all reported 16 inches at its peaks Thursday. Located near South Lake Tahoe, Sierra-at-Tahoe had 15 inches.
“The snow moved in a bit earlier than expected (Wednesday) morning instead of the afternoon,” Lake Tahoe snow forecast Bryan Allegretto wrote on his Tahoe Daily Snow blog. “Other than that, the storm has performed pretty much as expected so far. The snow levels started around 7,000 feet as expected and took a little while to drop to Truckee late in the day as expected.”
