Powerful storm in California and Nevada shuts interstate

A powerful blizzard raged in the Sierra Nevada overnight and into Saturday as the biggest storm of the season closed a long stretch of Interstate 80 in California and gusty winds and heavy rain pounded lower elevations, knocking out power to tens of thousands of customers.

Up to 3 feet of snow was expected in some areas. The National Weather Service in Reno said late Friday it expects the heaviest snow to arrive after midnight, with blizzard conditions and blowing snow continuing through Saturday that could reduce visibility to a quarter mile or less.

“High to extreme avalanche danger” is expected in the backcountry through Sunday evening throughout the central Sierra, including the greater Lake Tahoe area, the weather service said.

California officials closed 100 miles of I-80 on Friday because of “spinouts, high winds and low visibility.” They had no estimate of when the freeway would reopen from the California-Nevada border west of Reno to near Emigrant Gap, Calif.

Pacific Gas & Electric reported around 10 p.m. Friday that 24,000 homes and businesses were without power.

A tornado touched down Friday afternoon in Madera County, causing some damage to an elementary school, said Andy Bollenbacher, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service Hanford.

Some of the ski resorts that closed Friday said they planned to remain closed Saturday to dig out with an eye toward reopening Sunday, but most said they would wait to provide updates Saturday morning.

Palisades Tahoe, the largest resort at Tahoe’s north end and site of the 1960 Winter Olympics, said it hoped to reopen some of the Palisades runs at the lowest elevation on Saturday, but would close all chairlifts for a second day at neighboring Alpine Meadows due to forecasts of “heavy snow and winds in excess of 100 mph.”

“We have had essential personnel on the mountain all day doing control work, maintaining access roads and digging out chairlifts, but based on current conditions, if we are able to open at all, there will be significant delays,” Palisades Tahoe said Friday on X, formerly known as Twitter.

The storm began barreling into the region Thursday. A blizzard warning through Sunday morning covers a 300-mile stretch of the mountains.

Some ski enthusiasts raced to the mountains ahead of the storm.

Daniel Lavely, an avid skier who works at a Reno-area home improvement store, was not one of them. He said Friday he wouldn’t have considered making the hour-long drive to ski with his season pass at a Tahoe resort because of the hurricane-force winds.

But most of his customers Friday seemed to think the storm wouldn’t be as bad as predicted, he said.

“I had one person ask me for a shovel,” Lavely said. “No one asked me for a snowblower, which we sold out of the last storm about two weeks ago.”

Meteorologists are predicting as much as a foot of snow is possible in the mountains around Lake Tahoe by the weekend, with 3 to 6 feet in lakeshore communities and more than a foot possible in valleys on the eastern front of the Sierra, including Reno.

Yosemite National Park closed Friday, and officials said it would remain closed at least through midday Sunday.

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