Blizzard conditions impacting Tahoe travelers

Visibility on Highway 28 on March 5 is less than optimal. Photo/LTN

Update: 1:58pm:

Interstate 80 is expected to open at 2pm Sunday to passenger vehicles. There is no estimated time for trucks to be allowed through.

—–

Whiteout conditions are making travel in the greater Lake Tahoe area difficult.

Interstate 80 is closed in both directions because of the lack of visibility. Highway 89 around Emerald Bay is closed. The Carson Pass and Carson Spur are also closed. Mount Rose Highway in Nevada is closed. There is no estimated time when any of these highways will reopen.

Traffic is super slow and congested from the Stateline casinos through South Lake Tahoe. The city of South Lake Tahoe as of 1pm is warning people it is taking four hours to get from the Y to Meyers.

Expect it to be a long drive over Echo Summit, especially when Caltrans holds traffic for avalanche control.

Liberty Utilities has been contending with outages around the region on March 5. Several people on the South Shore were out about 5:40am, and hundreds in the Dollar Point area were affected starting about 4:30am. Both of those issues have been resolved.

Avalanche danger in the Alpine Meadows area is preventing crews from getting to that location to help restore service to the 130 customers affected.

A winter storm warning remains in effect through 4pm March 5.

People on both ends of the lake were shoveling more than a foot of snow on Sunday morning.

The avalanche danger is at the considerable level Sunday.

— Lake Tahoe News staff report