Nevada + California

Winter storm dumps several feet of snow on Sierra Nevada

KUNR Public Radio | By Lucia Starbuck

Published December 12, 2022 at 5:38 PM PST

Snow is falling, creating out-of-focus white dots across the entire photo. There’s a large truck covered with snow driving near a brown building. The road is covered in snow. The trees and the mountain in the background are barely visible due to snow. — Trucking snow out of the parking lot at Palisades Tahoe in Olympic Valley, Calif., on Dec. 11, 2022.

A winter storm dropped several feet of snow in higher elevations over the weekend on the Sierra Nevada and is now traveling east.

The snowstorm caused mountain highway closures and avalanche warnings. Winds exceeded 100 miles per hour and sent ski lift chairs in Lake Tahoe rocking.

A reminder that wind hold is always for your safety: pic.twitter.com/mb4Bnr7c1o
— SkiHeavenly (@skiheavenly) December 10, 2022

National Weather Service meteorologist Scott McGuire in Reno said these conditions can be extreme.

“It’s definitely pretty, pretty crazy and intense winds, and snow everywhere, and it’s very dangerous. I mean, people can get disoriented very quickly; the snow piles up rapidly, and then you add in the cold temperatures on top of it,” McGuire said.

The former Olympic site, Palisades Tahoe, saw the sixth-largest snowfall total in a 24-hour period on record.

Snow is an economic driver in the region. A number of ski resorts already opened early this season, but it’s too soon to tell how the rest of winter might go.