At least nine Lake Tahoe ski resorts closed, and visitors to Yosemite National Park were urgently told to leave Friday as California's most powerful storm of the season bore down on the Sierra Nevada, where residents were urged to take shelter as they prepared for up to 3 meters (10 feet) of snow in some areas.
The storm began arriving in the region on Thursday, with the biggest effects expected to close major highways and trigger power outages Friday afternoon into Saturday. A blizzard warning through Sunday morning covers a 482-kilometer stretch of the mountains.
Rick Grundy, manager of the Chevron Food Mart near Donner Lake just off Interstate 80, said business was slow Friday — people seemed to have taken officials' advice to hunker down. After living in the Truckee, California, area for 20 years, he said he knows how to prepare for bad weather.
"We're pretty well-stocked. We knew this was coming," Grundy said. "One thing I've learned, if you are not used to driving in this weather, if you're not used to being in this area, it's not a good idea. You should stay home."
Meteorologists predict as much as 3 meters of snow is possible in the mountains around Lake Tahoe by the weekend, with 0.9 to 1.8 meters in the communities on the lake's shores and more than 30 centimeters possible in the valleys on the Sierra's eastern front, including Reno.
Winds are expected to gust in excess of 185 kph over Sierra ridgetops and 113 kph at lower elevations.
Backcountry avalanche warnings were in place in various areas. All visitors at Yosemite were supposed to be out as of noon Friday, with the park closed at least through noon Sunday. More than 2.13 meters of snow could fall in some areas.
At least nine Lake Tahoe ski resorts said they closed Friday because of the conditions, and a handful of other resorts either opened or planned to but warned of limitations and delays.
But the snow wasn't all bad news for the resorts. Palisades Tahoe ski resort said the big dump expected over the weekend on top of 2.4 meters of snow in February should allow them to keep the slopes open through Memorial Day.
In South Lake Tahoe, the lunchtime crowd at Heidi's Pancake House was a third of the typical 60 diners. Even with the worsening forecast, general manager Salvador Ortega expected to stay open and most of his employees to show up.
"We are one of the restaurants in South Lake Tahoe that don't close unless we don't have power or something breaks down. We're open 365," he said. "Tahoe is a small community. It's rare when an employee doesn't make it to work."
Andrew Schwartz, the lead scientist at UC-Berkeley's Central Sierra Snow Lab, said it is possible they could break their modern-day record of about 1 meter of snow in a single day set in 1989.
The California Highway Patrol imposed travel restrictions on a long stretch of I-80 between Reno and Sacramento, requiring drivers to put chains on their tires.
On the bright side, California water officials said the storm should provide a much-needed boost to the Sierra snowpack, which is vital to the state's water supplies. It stood at 80% of average to date on Thursday, California Department of Water resources officials said.
