The biggest snowstorm of the season continued to bear down on the Sierra Nevada Saturday, creating whiteout conditions and leaving a portion of Interstate 80 closed with no estimated time of reopening. Christie Smith reports.
The biggest snowstorm of the season continued to bear down on the Sierra Nevada Saturday, creating whiteout conditions and leaving a portion of Interstate 80 closed with no estimated time of reopening.
“We were expecting a winter wonderland with our dog,” said Lisa Hotran, who drove up to Truckee with Terrence Chan when skies and roads were clear last Sunday.
“We thought we were in store for perfect weather, of skiing and playing in the snow,” Chan said. “Around Thursday, the weather definitely took a turn for the worse.”
The couple are staying put and waiting it out as the storm moves through with powerful winds.
“It was pretty nuts,” Chan said. “The wind was howling. We have only left the house maybe a couple times a day to go walk the dog. But even then, we are wearing our full snow gear. We put on show shoes and we’re kind-of standing in blizzard weather, in whiteout conditions.”
“We basically just canceled our activities. We planned to go skiing, we wanted to go cross-country skiing, we wanted to go out to dinner,” Hotran said. “But the snow outside, it’s basically five feet tall.”
Inside the house, though, they said they have plenty of warmth and food. The power has cut in and out a few times, but the pair said it’s usually back on within a few minutes.
Work crews in Truckee also kept working Saturday to try and clear snow on Interstate 80.
“First and foremost, the message still stands: avoid all mountain travel this weekend if at all possible,” said Caltrans spokesperson Jeremy Linder. “Interstate 80 across the Sierra Nevada is still currently closed between Colfax all the way to the Nevada state line. And that’s both eastbound and westbound. Due to that, there was a number of spin outs yesterday.”
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Since then, the weather conditions have only gotten worse and the snow keeps piling up.
