‘This is crazy’: Snow, outages and more disrupt foothills life amid California storms
Intense winter storms have piled feet of snow down to low elevations in California for the past two weeks, upending life for thousands of residents across the Sierra Nevada foothills.
Their daily struggles have ranged from long power outages and extended school closures to hours of shoveling before residents can leave their driveways.
At their worst, the recent storms have turned deadly.
An 80-year-old Foresthill woman died Feb. 28 when part of her porch collapsed under the weight of snow; the National Weather Service recorded close to 4 feet of snow in the preceding days. Two days later, in the El Dorado County town of Camino, a 62-year-old resident was found dead on the ground in the snow, near a vehicle, sheriff’s officials said.
For many others, the storms’ disruptions have been long and lingering amid one of the most relentless stretches of snowfall they can remember.
“It’s just been day after day after day,” said Lauren Anglin, who works at the Dutch Flat Trading Post on the town’s Main Street.
“It’s hard to just get out of your driveway and get to work. We have a lot of older residents that live here, and they’re having to struggle.”
Snowfall is already bordering on historic. California Department of Water Resources officials, during a snow survey last week at Phillips Station, said the current winter is on pace to threaten the 1982-83 record for statewide snowpack level.
Continued snow in the past few days have helped that campaign: State water officials as of Wednesday morning reported statewide snowpack at 192% of average for the date, and 196% of average in the central Sierra range.
High elevations have seen astonishing amounts of powder, with the Sugar Bowl and Palisades Tahoe ski resorts tallying 5 feet and 3 feet of snow, respectively, in just 48 hours this past weekend.
But multiple feet of snow have also accumulated at elevations thousands of feet lower than those resorts, in parts of the foothills along the Interstate 80 and Highway 50 corridors that are used to getting snow, but not nearly this much.
Roofs are collapsing under heavy snow
Rooftop snow has been a serious concern, in both the mountains and foothills.
“Several commercial buildings have completely collapsed under the weight of snow,” the Georgetown Fire Department, which serves the El Dorado County town of nearly 3,000 residents, said in a Tuesday news release.
“Several canopies have also collapsed, including one of the fire department’s at our Buckeye station. In addition, several businesses on Main Street have had damage to the sidewalk overhangs and roof systems.”
Truckee Elementary was closed Tuesday and Truckee High closed through at least Wednesday, “due to the amount of snow accumulation” on the roof of each campus that may threaten cave-ins, Tahoe-Truckee Unified School District officials wrote.
The weather service urged residents to clear snow from their roofs if they can safely do so — especially with a warmer storm system forecast to arrive late Thursday that will bring heavy rain to the foothills.
“Snow on roofs can absorb the rain and become even heavier,” the weather service’s Sacramento office tweeted Tuesday.
In addition to the risk of collapsing, snow can slide off rooftops suddenly, endangering people below, weather officials wrote.
Thousands without power for days in Nevada County
In Nevada County, nearly 5,000 homes and businesses remained without power as of Wednesday morning, according to a Pacific Gas and Electric Co. outage map.
Nearly 2,000 of those customers, mostly in the Nevada City area, have been in the dark for more than a week.
Nevada County last Thursday proclaimed a local emergency due to widespread power outages and downed trees blocking roadways. El Dorado and Placer counties also declared local emergencies, each doing so last Friday.
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‘Every small task … is 10 times harder’
Anglin, who works at the Dutch Flat store, lives in the Placer County town of Alta, about 5 miles from her job.
She lives on a private road that is not plowed by the county, fortunate to live near the bottom of the roadway. Neighbors higher up the road will pitch in to shovel out the snow, she said.
Anglin has two kids, ages 9 and 1. The 9-year-old has been home from school for more than a full week’s worth of snow days, she said.
The Dutch Flat Trading Post has lacked power for six days in the recent storms, Anglin said. Each day without power costs the store about $200 extra in propane.
“Every small task, I feel like, is 10 times harder. Which has been a pain in the butt.”
Anglin has lived in Alta for six years, but her husband is from the area. She said the snow level is much higher than storms from December 2021 to January 2022, but that so far the power impacts have not been as bad as last winter’s storms.
“We didn’t have power for almost 10 days” last winter, Anglin said.
Another challenge for those in Dutch Flat: it’s often the point where Caltrans closes eastbound traffic on Interstate 80, either to truckers or to all traffic. That can create a burden on roadways and at local gas stations.
“There’s just so much traffic right there, so in order to get gas just to fill your generator is sometimes an hour wait,” Anglin said. Sometimes, the stations run out of gas.
‘Craziest storm I ever imagined having’
Sylvia Kline lives in a home between Dutch Flat and Alta, at an elevation of about 3,500 feet.
Kline has a 4-year-old child and is 9 months pregnant. The storms have added extra stress, particularly about the need to be able to leave their home in the event of an emergency.
“When you get 4 or 5 feet of snow, you can have every capable vehicle in the world” but still struggle to get out, she said.
Kline lives 3/4 of a mile down a private road with steep embankments on each side. She drives a Toyota 4Runner, and her husband has a Jeep.
Amid heavy snow the last weekend of February, she said it took them about four hours to exit their road, winching their way along.
“This is crazy,” Kline said. “This is the craziest storm I ever imagined having, living here.”
Residents on Kline’s road earlier this week were able to hire a plow, clearing the 3/4-mile stretch and easing some of their concerns, though it continued to snow more heavily than anticipated overnight and Wednesday morning.
Kline said power issues at her home have not been nearly as bad as the December 2021 storm, when she lost all power and cell service for 13 consecutive days. “That was a nightmare,” she recalled.
Kline, who works from home, said she has been fortunate to have only lost power for three relatively short windows in recent weeks, despite far more snow than last winter.
The roof of Kline’s home is steep and made of metal, so a lot of the snow that accumulated in late February melted during a short break in precipitation late last week, she said.
But she has watched as neighbors on her road have spent entire days shoveling snow from their roofs. She worries for their safety, especially those who are older.
“You’re either gonna die from the roof caving in, or you’re gonna die shoveling it off,” Kline said. “So it’s not ideal for the older folks up here.”
This week’s Sierra foothill forecast
Forecasts call for heavy snow to clear out for parts of the foothills, only for heavy rain to roll in by the end of this week, which weather officials warn could create significant flooding risk, especially at elevations between about 2,000 feet and 4,000 feet.
Dutch Flat could get 2 to 3 inches of rain Thursday night alone, according to the weather service.
While Kline said her property is sloped in a way that it handles flood waters well, the pregnant mother said she remains nervous for any “unforeseen issues” as rain falls atop the snow.
“Storm of the century, everybody keeps saying,” she said. “One in 100 years, it just doesn’t stop.”
This story was originally published March 8, 2023 at 11:50 AM with the headline "‘This is crazy’: Snow, outages and more disrupt foothills life amid California storms."
