Tahoe storm brings wind gusts of 190 mph, closes I-80 indefinitely

A raging winter storm gained force overnight Friday in the Sierra Nevada — with wind gusts reaching over 190 miles per hour in high-elevation areas — forcing roads in the Lake Tahoe area to close and ski resorts to shutter.

The blizzard is the strongest that California has seen so far this year. In the last 48 hours, the storm has dumped between 24 and 42 inches across the mountains, according to Sara Purdue, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Sacramento.

As of Saturday morning, Caltrans had closed a 52-mile portion of Interstate 80 between Colfax and the California-Nevada state line, and was discouraging travel through the mountains while the blizzard warning is in effect through Sunday morning. Jeremy Linder, a spokesperson for Caltrans, couldn’t estimate when officials would reopen the highway.

The decision came after multiple spinouts along the highway in the afternoon Friday, Linder said.

Highway officials started to hold traffic around 4:30, leaving around 200 to 300 vehicles stranded on I-80, according to Truckee Fire District battalion chief Ryan Ochoa, whose Soda Springs-based crews responded to the scene.

Emergency personnel and tow trucks struggled to reach motorists for hours, many of whom were forced to abandon their cars on the highway.

“Even tow trucks were getting stuck,” Ochoa said, adding that he did not receive reports of anyone needing to be taken to a hospital.

Caltrans also closed down State Route 20 and State Route 49 in Sierra County, two commonly used alternative routes to reach the Truckee area. Interstate 50 remains open, although chain restrictions are in place.

“We are still encouraging motorists not to travel this weekend if they don’t have to,” Linder said.

The closure of I-80 caused problems for Nicole Garcia and her colleagues early Saturday morning even though they did not even need to drive on it.

Garcia, 30, a customer service representative from Sacramento, was staying at a hotel in Truckee and left with two colleagues in her all-wheel-drive Jeep Renegade early in the morning for an appointment just minutes away in the downtown area. But more than a foot of snow had fallen overnight, and high winds had created drifts several feet high.

“I went over a big old snow pile and got stuck,” Garcia said. Unable to move the vehicle, she called AAA, but was told the company could not send a service truck from Reno because the highway was shut down. Out came the shovels, Garcia said, and she and her two co-workers dug for an hour to no avail. Finally, she said, another colleague with a truck and a tow strap pulled them out.

High winds and heavy snow knocked down trees branches onto power lines, leading to outages on Friday night and Saturday morning for hundreds of customers of the Truckee Donner Public Utility District.

Per the National Weather Service, snow totals for the last 48 hours as of 10 am on Saturday were:

• Bear Valley: 27”
• Kirkwood: 27”
• Sierra Snow Lab: 39.8″
• Sierra at Tahoe: 35”
• Palisades: 31”
• Soda Springs: 42”
• Kingvale: 42”
• Eagle Lakes: 32”
• Yuba Pass: 36”

At historic downtown Truckee’s snowbound crossroads at Donner Pass Road and Bridge Street, Juan Perez was shoveling snow off the sidewalks around the Bar of America, a Tahoe-area institution on the corner, where new snow lay a foot and a half deep and drifts rose substantially higher.

“Today, oh my god,” said Lopez, 39, a maintenance worker for the bar. “I’m just waiting for my partner — he’s got a blower but he hasn’t shown up yet.”

Here’s what to expect the rest of the weekend:

• The storm hit its peak overnight Friday, but will continue to pummel the mountains with snow and wind through Monday. Wind gusts are expected around 45 to 50 miles per hour in the mountains.
• In the next 24 hours, areas of 5,000 feet or above could get around five feet of snow, while lower elevation areas will see between one and four feet.
• The mountains will see back-to-back storms. A slight break in the snowfall is expected Monday morning, but a second storm could hit the area by the afternoon, bringing an additional two feet of snow, Purdue said.

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