RENO, Nev. – Areas of the Sierra Nevada have been hit with a snowfall like they haven’t seen in generations, with steep drifts stranding an Amtrak train, knocking out the Reno airport and shutting down major highways across the mountains.
The California Highway Patrol reported 720 crashes Sunday night.
The string of moisture-laden storms has dropped up to 19 feet of snow at elevations above 7,000 feet since Dec. 28 and 61/2 feet at lower elevations in the Reno area. Meteorologists said it was the most snow the Reno-Lake Tahoe area has seen since 1916.
“I’ve lived here for almost 40 years and I’ve never seen anything like it,” Peter Walenta, 69, said Sunday from his home in Stateline, on the southern end of Lake Tahoe. “This baby just seems to be stretching on forever. Right now I’m looking out the window and it’s dumping.”
Storms also have caused flooding in Southern California and Arizona, deadly avalanches in Utah and ice damage and flooding in the Ohio Valley.
The weather was blamed for at least eight weekend deaths in Southern California, including a homeless man killed Sunday by a landslide. Along the storms’ eastward track, avalanches killed two people Saturday in Utah, authorities said.
An avalanche Sunday afternoon knocked a 13-year-old boy from a ski lift at the Las Vegas Ski &Snowboard Resort, 45 miles northwest of Las Vegas. Dozens of people were looking for the boy Sunday night, said Clark County fire spokesman Bob Leinbach.
A lull in the storm allowed the reopening Sunday of Interstate 80 over Donner Summit and U.S. 50 over Echo Summit after the highways were closed off and on for more than a day. The highways connect Sacramento, Calif., to Reno.
“The snowbanks along Interstate 80 are about 8 to 10 feet high. It’s like you’re going through a maze,” said Jane Dulaney, spokeswoman for the Rainbow Lodge west of Donner Summit.
About 25 motorists were rescued by National Guard members in Humvees after they become stranded overnight on U.S. 395 about 20 miles south of Reno, Nevada Highway Patrol Trooper Jeff Bowers said. Motorists had to wait up to six hours until rescuers could reach them after daylight Sunday.
More than 220 Amtrak passengers were back in Sacramento on Sunday after spending the night stuck in their train in deep snow west of Donner Summit, spokesman Marc Magliari said.
One car of the California Zephyr, eastbound from Oakland, Calif., to Chicago, derailed in the snow Saturday evening. No one was hurt.
Reno-Tahoe International Airport was closed for 12 hours overnight for the second time in a week, and only the third time in 40 years, because plows could not keep up with the heavy snowfall, spokeswoman Trish Tucker said.
“You’d have to go back to 1916 to top this sequence of storms,” National Weather Service forecaster Tom Cylke said Sunday of the snow accumulation in Reno.
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