When it first snowed in parts of California last month, it was a novelty. Then the flurries kept piling on, leaving some people buried in Snow and trapped at home weeks later.
California has gotten so much snow—as much as 16 feet in two weeks up north—that the state has nearly broken its four-decades-old record for winter snowfall, according to the state’s water resources department.
Much of the Golden State isn’t equipped to clear that much snow. Some residents at higher elevations reported that their roofs and streets were still blanketed weeks after storms and blizzards had passed. Life in parts of the state—including Yosemite National Park, San Bernardino County to the south and Lake Tahoe to the north—has been effectively halted as people wait for relief.
“I swear to God it feels like we’re living in a movie scene,” said
Michelle Calkins,
a 41-year-old real-estate agent in Lake Arrowhead, in San Bernardino County.
California has nearly broken its four-decades-old record for winter snowfall, state officials said.
Photo:
Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
Ms. Calkins said she has never seen snow like this in her nearly two decades living in the area. She described walls of snow blocking people’s doorways and heaped on the roads.
“I’ve been snowshoeing to the grocery store,” she said. “We are in need of help.”
She said she has delivered food to her elderly neighbors who are trapped at home. It’s too dangerous for them to go outside because the snow would be up to their hips, she said.
State and local officials have been trying to mount a complex plowing operation to clear snow that, for some, is more than they’ve seen in their lifetimes.
Gov.
Gavin Newsom
activated the California National Guard to help with the relief efforts, his office said. He declared a state of emergency last week for 13 counties, including Los Angeles and San Bernardino, as a difficult winter winds down. Around the holidays, the state was battered by a series of storms known as “atmospheric rivers” that caused significant flooding and killed more than a dozen people.
Another set of storms began last month in parts of the state. At Yosemite in the Sierra Nevada mountains, a series of storms piled snow as high as 15 feet, forecasters said. Officials have closed the park through at least Sunday. Further north in Lake Tahoe, several storms blanketed the area in snow. A number of ski resorts have had to close periodically so workers could make the slopes safe to use.
The snowy San Gabriel mountain range behind the Los Angeles skyline.
Photo:
Eric Thayer/Bloomberg News
In Southern California, areas at higher elevations that are technically in the desert are more closely resembling the North Pole. Workers in San Bernardino County have cleared snow from more than 437 miles of roads since the storms began last month, county officials said. The county, which has been particularly hard-hit by the storms, has set up food banks and opened shelters.
A few thousand customers in the state have no power, according to PowerOutage.us, but the electric grids have mostly held up.
Forecasters haven’t yet predicted relief for parts of the state. Snow was battering Lake Tahoe on Tuesday, the National Weather Service in Reno, Nev., said. The agency said another atmospheric river was set to bring rain and possible floods to Northern California starting on Thursday.
Write to Alyssa Lukpat at [email protected]
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