Major Snowstorm Starts to Pound Mountains Around Lake Tahoe

U.S.|Major Snowstorm Starts to Pound Mountains Around Lake Tahoe https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/01/us/sierra-nevada-tahoe-snow-blizzard.html You have a preview view of this article while we are checking your access. When we have confirmed access, the full article content will load. Forecasters issued rare blizzard warnings as heavy, wind-driven snow began to halt travel and force ski resorts and Yosemite National […]

T Kauer T Kauer
Mar 2, 2024 - 04:15
Major Snowstorm Starts to Pound Mountains Around Lake Tahoe

Major Snowstorm Starts to Pound Mountains Around Lake Tahoe thumbnail

U.S.|Major Snowstorm Starts to Pound Mountains Around Lake Tahoe

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/01/us/sierra-nevada-tahoe-snow-blizzard.html

You have a preview view of this article while we are checking your access. When we have confirmed access, the full article content will load.

Forecasters issued rare blizzard warnings as heavy, wind-driven snow began to halt travel and force ski resorts and Yosemite National Park to close.

A passing car, a highway overpass and evergreen trees are barely visible through a white haze of falling snow. A green sign directs drivers to freeway entrances.
A car drove through snow on Thursday in the Sierra Nevada near Kingvale, Calif.Credit…Mario Tama/Getty Images

By Jill Cowan, Julie Brown and Alex Hoeft

Jill Cowan reported from Los Angeles. Julie Brown and Alex Hoeft reported from Reno, Nev.

A major snowstorm bore down Friday on the Sierra Nevada, including the Lake Tahoe area, with as much as 10 feet of snow expected at higher elevations. Forecasters issued dire warnings about trying to drive through blustering winds and whiteout conditions, and Yosemite National Park was closed.

“Your safe travel window is over in the Sierra,” the National Weather Service in Reno, Nev., posted on social media. “Best to hunker down where you are.”

The National Park Service said that visitors who were already in Yosemite on Friday morning must leave by noon. Many ski resorts in the region announced that they were closing for the day.

One resort, Palisades Tahoe, posted on social media that it had seen “intense” snowfall and winds of 100 miles an hour. In videos posted by the resort, ski lifts were faintly visible through a blanket of white, and the sky and the ground were indistinguishable from each other.

The resort, which was packed last weekend for a major ski competition, had become “an absolute ghost town” by Friday, said Veronica Berkholtz, a manager of the coffee shop at Palisades Tahoe.

Meteorologists began sounding rare alarms earlier this week about “life-threatening blizzard conditions” expected in the mountains of the Sierra Nevada, saying the approaching storm could drop more than three feet of snow through Sunday.

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