Mountains still blanketed in snow as California storm eases. Will it snow next week?
The heaviest of rain, snow and wind have passed from this week’s major atmospheric storm across Northern California, but showers continued Friday and mountain travel is still treacherous following whiteout conditions Thursday.
The storm brought feet of snow across the Sierra Nevada range this week. In 72 hours, from midday Monday to early Thursday afternoon, between 2 feet and 5 feet of snow fell across various Sierra and Tahoe-area ski resorts, according to the National Weather Service.
In the Sierra, Interstate 80 was back open in both directions, with chain controls, by 7 a.m. Friday. Traffic was closed overnight “due to multiple spinouts,” Caltrans said in tweets.
An avalanche warning remains in place through 10 a.m. Friday, according to NWS.
Just more than 2 inches of rain fell in downtown Sacramento from Tuesday through Thursday, according to the NWS.
Record rainfall dropped Wednesday and Thursday at Stockton Airport, at nearly an inch-and-a-half each day. Thursday’s total more than doubled Stockton’s previous precipitation record for the date.
The impact was even more severe farther south. A portion of Highway 1 in Big Sur simply crumbled into the Pacific Ocean during the deluge.
Extreme winds earlier this week, topping 60 mph in Sacramento late Tuesday night and reaching as high as 125 mph at mountain peaks, led to mass power outages. Tens of thousands of Sacramento Municipal Utility District customers, and hundreds of thousands of Pacific Gas and Electric Co. customers, lost power, many of them for more than a day as the continued impact of the storm made restoration a slow process.
SMUD as of 6:30 a.m. Friday on its online outage map said about 1,000 customers remained without power, scattered across Sacramento County, down from about 4,000 Thursday evening and a peak of over 150,000 early Wednesday morning.
PG&E on its outage map reported nearly 44,000 still without power Friday morning across its territory, which spans more than 30 counties. PG&E said about 575,000 customers lost power Wednesday.
About 75% of those homes and businesses were restored the same day, but tens of thousands have had to wait longer. Unlike SMUD, PG&E crews restoring power have to contend with heavy snow.
What about this weekend? And next week?
The NWS currently forecasts a mild weekend, with moderate valley rain and heavy mountain snow possible early next week.
For Sacramento, expect a high in the mid-50s with a slight chance of rain developing Saturday night around 10 p.m. or later, according to the NWS.
Morning showers could continue Sunday before clearing out, with a high near 60 degrees. Rain will likely return late Sunday or early Monday morning and continue most of the day, forecasts show.
Winds, mercifully, are forecast to stay calm through at least Sunday.
As for the mountains, light snow remains possible Saturday and Sunday, but the forecast at South Lake Tahoe shows it mostly sunny both days.
Snow will kick back into gear Monday. The NWS forecasts “heavy snow” Tuesday both at South Lake Tahoe and north of the lake, near Truckee. Accumulation amounts have not been forecast for Tuesday.
This story was originally published January 29, 2021 at 7:14 AM.
