The Sierras got dumped on this weekend. Parts of Lake Tahoe, for example, reportedly saw as much as five inches an hour and about four feet over two days, while Mammoth recorded 20 inches on Saturday alone. All this before the early-season storm wrapped up a tour of the West Coast and started making its way toward the Plains. It’s lifted the snowpack in the Sierras to 223 percent of its average by this time of year, bringing the wild “Triple-Dip La Niña” predictions of late summer full circle before winter could even get an official start.
All that’s good and fun from the perspective of a powder hound. But at least one resort showed the other side of the coin when it comes to storms this intense.
“A reminder that wind hold is always for your safety,” South Lake Tahoe’s Heavenly Resort tweeted on Saturday morning.
A reminder that wind hold is always for your safety: pic.twitter.com/mb4Bnr7c1o
— SkiHeavenly (@skiheavenly) December 10, 2022
Winds reportedly reached 100 mph, forcing the resort to shut chairs down until conditions were safe again. Had they not shut things down temporarily, it’s fair to say this would have been the chairlift from hell. Meanwhile, the U.S. Forest Service issued an avalanche warning for the backcountry in the mountains west of the area while the same conditions forced a 70-mile-long closure along eastbound I-80 due to “zero visibility” from Colton, Calif. into Nevada.
This season has gotten off to a big start, to put it mildly.
