What it’s like to live in a Sierra blizzard: ‘We were cut off from the rest of the world’

Cheryl Paduano and her husband, Tony, made the treacherous 15-mile drive to their general store through whiteout conditions because they felt the providing supplies to locals was critical.

“I never close,” Cheryl Paduano said. “In the history of the store, twice, I’ve opened at 9 instead of 8 (in the morning), because I couldn’t get out of my road.

“Well, this week a tree fell on my car.”

The Paduanos own the Soda Springs General Store on historic Route 40 near Donner Summit, a short drive east of Donner Lake near Lake Tahoe. They stayed open during strong blizzard over the March 2 weekend that featured 190-mile-an-hour winds at nearby mountain peaks and 10 feet of snow over four days.

And even a tree falling on her car didn’t prevent Cheryl from making sure her family-owned general store was accessible during and after the biggest snow storm of the year.

“There’s no way in hell that I’m not going to have the store open when I know everybody who’s stranded up here needs supplies,” she said.

The blizzard that swept through the region has passed. But it was so intense, it shut down resorts, cut off power, stranded motorists, and drew national attention. Its effects remain, both a blessing for the snowpack (jacking it up to above normal for this time of year) and, ultimately, ski resorts; and a Sierra curse to the people who live here coping with and digging out of the mounds of snow.

From the valley, we can see the snow caps. From the residents’ homes, they still see mounds of snow and the realities of living with the blessing and the curse.

Paduano spoke hastily amid her store’s recovery efforts last week.

She shoveled her parking lot for hours on end while snow fell over the weekend. The building still needed a sidewalk cleared in front of the building. The snow removal led to snow banks surrounding the parking lot stacking up to 8 feet tall.

“You have to keep up on it throughout the day,” she said of snow removal. ”We get calls from people who are stuck at their homes because they weren’t wise. They didn’t back their car out a couple three times during the storm, they just say in their home for three days and let it pile up. And now they are in a situation where they can’t get out of their house.”

Seeing locals digging their cars out of snow piles taller than the cars themselves was commonplace. Snow stacked taller than front doors of houses and business buildings. The banks of snow on the sides of Interstate 80, which closed over the weekend and re-opened Monday morning, were 10 to 15 feet tall in spots.

A power outage Saturday prevented the Paduanos from being able to take payments for food and supplies.

“We were cut off from the rest of the world without cell (connections) and internet,” Paduano said. “And that’s when people started gravitating here because then they worry. They start thinking, ‘What if I had an emergency?’ So the people that know what they’re doing that dig themselves out, snowshoe or ski down here or drive. Our lot was kept open the entire time.”

The Soda Springs General Store has hot and cold food, drinks, toiletries and sanitary supplies, providing for the area with a population of less than 100 people. The nearest super market is in Truckee, a roughly 20-minute drive east when conditions allow.

Extreme is the norm

Of course, the area is used to extreme conditions. Donner Pass road, which connects Soda Springs and neighboring Norden to Donner Lake and Truckee, has been closed intermittently over the past year. It closed last winter because of snow, and over the summer after 10- to 12-tons fell from a nearby mountain damaging the road. It took roughly two months for it to reopen.

Ben Holder, a driver who distributes food for Stohlgren Brothers based in Truckee, said the weekend’s storm was one of the rare occasions he couldn’t help deliver supplies to neighboring areas.

“I’m the milk man, the protein man, I bring all the specialty items and keep Truckee rolling,” Holder said. “It’s not often we get shut down, but we did get shut down this weekend a little bit because all the roads were closed.”

Holder regularly makes drive from Truckee to Soda Springs General Store to make deliveries.

“When I was here on Thursday, you couldn’t even see across the street,” Holder said.

This year, last year

While the storm created logistical challenges for the region, it was good news for California’s water supply. According to the UC Berkeley Central Sierra Snow Lab, the state’s snow water equivalent after the storm was 104% after beginning January at 28%, which is considered encouraging news given the state’s history with droughts over the past decade.

Despite the snow over the four-day period, the snowfall hasn’t come close to last year’s historic totals. According to Palisades Tahoe, last year’s total snow fall was 723 inches at 8,000 feet of elevation. This year’s total is 323 inches as of March 5, which saw a near 100-inch increase from Feb. 21 due to the storm.

“Last year was a completely different story,” Paduano said. “We got 10-foot storm after 10-foot storm for two months.”

A noticeable difference between last week’s blizzard and the snow fall from 2023 was the wind that blew through the area.

“It never stopped,” Holder said. “Drifts were everywhere. It was the blizzard conditions, white out, sideways snow. It was 80 hours of never ending wind along with the snow. When it just comes down, it’s a different story. But when it’s going every which way and surrounding you, people get disoriented, they don’t know where they are. They make mistakes.”

Power outage that lasted days

Jesse Justus, a general foreman for Wasatch Electric which is a subcontractor for Liberty Utilities, estimated 138 customers lost power over the stormy weekend due to high winds.

“We had a bunch of trees go through the power lines, knock them down, tear down wires, break some cross arms. So my guys are just flying in on the helicopter. Here they come right now,” Justus said, motioning to a helicopter dropping linemen at a loading area.

The helicopter could be seen from downtown Truckee, towing workers who hang from a roughly 50 foot line underneath. Transporting linemen that way allows them to reach remote locations without the helicopter needing to land in wooded areas where there might not be room.

To a layperson, the helicopter towing in linemen could look like a rescue operation. But hanging beneath a helicopter and flying around at high speeds is old hat for the linemen who specialize in repairing power lines in the Sierra.

“This is the easiest and safest way — and the best to get in there quick to get the power restored as fast as we can,” Justus said.

Justus said his team of 15 or 16 linemen successful fixed eight problem areas near Truckee that kept the power out for days. The power was expected to be restored later that night, roughly four days after going out during the worst of the blizzard on Saturday.

Ski resorts benefiting from the storm after closures

The ski resorts in Lake Tahoe also felt the consequences of the storm, many of which closed during the weekend due to the adverse conditions.

“That storm was something else,” said Cole Zimmerman, a communications manager at Heavenly Lake Tahoe. “And we were kinda preparing for the big one from the get go and we certainly go it. ... When you get a storm of that magnitude, it takes a lot to get the mountain open from avalanche mitigation with our patrol team to lift operations and lift maintenance, digging out to lifts, to something as simple as clearing out the parking lots.”

Heavenly is one of the largest resorts in Lake Tahoe and has roughly 70 people on its patrol team with 35 working on the mountain in shifts. The group spent time following the storm setting off explosives around the mountain to mitigate avalanches with the influx of roughly 60 inches of snow, Zimmerman said.

Even though the storm was difficult to navigate with its high winds and intense snowfall, the ski resorts in the area were able to reap the benefits over the most recent weekend with clear conditions. Nearly every resort in Lake Tahoe was fully open after a relatively low amount of snow during December, January and February. Many resorts still had trails closed due to not having enough snow prior to the storm.

Heavenly doesn’t disclose its attendance numbers, but Zimmerman indicated last weekend was one of the busiest of the year.

“I do think this weekend, with all the snow we got, we definitely did see that excitement and saw people coming up to take it in and enjoy it,” he said.