Lake Tahoe and snow base keep rising
Motorists are now able to get over most mountain passes in the Lake Tahoe area.
Earlier this morning a slide closed Highway 50 over Echo Summit. Caltrans has cleared it. Highways were a mess last night, with most of them closed at times. It was taking motorists double their normal drive time and then some to get to their destinations.
Highway 89 around Emerald Bay is closed.
Crews were out doing avalanche control, as the booms resonated through neighborhoods. This was to make the roads safe.
The Sierra Avalanche Center is saying the danger level for Dec. 22 is “considerable”. This is for below, at and above tree line.
The National Weather Service in Reno has issued a flood warning until 4pm Tuesday for the burn areas including the King Fire that scarred the forest near Pollock Pines. The warning also includes the Rim, Butte and American fire locations.
The good news about the rain at lower elevations is that Lake Tahoe has risen 1.92 inches in the last storm, according to the National Weather Service. The agency said 4.3 billion gallons of water fell in to the lake in a 30-hour period.
Most of the ski resorts are reporting 10 inches or more of snow. Sierra-at-Tahoe and Tahoe City Cross Country closed on Tuesday to dig out.
More snow is in the forecast for the rest of the week, with 100 percent chance on Thursday.
For current road conditions, click on the state icons on the home page of Lake Tahoe News.
— Lake Tahoe News staff report
Took ten hours to get here from Sacramento yesterday afternoon. One poor guy had a large rock come down and hit his truck and another car. Looked like he was OK. His truck didn’t fair as well. Cant figure out why it was such a mess. The roads were in good shape and it really wasn’t snowing that hard. Cal Trans did have the summit closed for avalanche control and that was at least an hour wait on top. Sure a lot of people coming up the hill for a Monday. Looks like a good two weeks for the holidays with visitors to the basin.
Aren’t the lifts at Kirkwood also closed? That’s what I hear and what is reported on their website.
Great news about the lake level raising. Keep dumping that water rich Sierra Cement and we will have a great run off in spring. Made it down the pass last night with no issues and the North Fork of the Yuba river was at a level I haven’t seen in years. Keep the rain and snow coming.
Took us over 5 hrs to get to Sacramento Monday. We left South Lake around 1:15pm, 1st stop was waiting in Meyers for over an hour due to a bunch of car accidents up on Echo; which we totally understood once we were up there, and had a eastbound Jeep SUV slide at us sideways, luckily we escaped by a few feet, but it looked inevitable at the time. We proceeded slowly probably averaging 30-35, getting stuck behind cars for long stretches that did not have the skills/correct car to drive in the snow, and passing had to be done very carefully. Next was our 75 minute wait for the boulder struck vehicle to get cleared from the road, it was getting dark, and we wondered if we might have to hunker down for the night on the highway. Once we got started again it went pretty smoothly.
The scale on the Tahoe lake elevation is so exaggerated it makes less than 2 inches look like a flood if you don’t look real close.
Is this on purpose to make people plan trips to watch the lake fill up or make VHR reservations to go boating in the summer?
This was nuthin. Just wait until El Niño busts a nut on that snowpack like in ’97 and the real flooding and landslides get rolling.