UPDATE: Winter blast covers northern Sacramento Valley in snow

A cold and wet system that hit the North State late Thursday night has brought snow to much of the northern Sacramento Valley and has created traffic headaches for much of the region.

Interstate 5 north of Redding was closed in both directions since Thursday night before the California Department of Transportation reopened the Pacific Coast's main thoroughfare around 6 p.m. Friday.

Snow fell as far south as the Red Bluff-Corning area, according to the National Weather Service.

In parts of Siskiyou County, they were measuring the snow fall in terms of feet.

And the snow is expected to continue for much of Friday morning.

“It should continue at least the next several hours, then depending on where you are, it will slowly transition to a mix of rain and snow and then eventually all rain,” said Robert Baruffaldi, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Sacramento.

In the city of Shasta Lake, about 8 inches of snow had fallen as of 6 a.m. Friday, and Baruffaldi said there are reports that the Hilltop Drive area in Redding has gotten 7 inches of snow.

In the city of Mount Shasta, there have been reports of up to 2 feet of snow that has fallen overnight, the National Weather Service said.

"The Mount Shasta city area got hit especially hard," meteorologist Chandler Price of the National Weather Service in Medford, Oregon, said.

"We are expecting another 3 to 5 inches before 10 a.m.," he added.

Earlier Friday, the snow snarled travel along Interstate 5 and other North State roads and highways. I-5 has been closed north of Redding since around 9 p.m. Thursday.

Southbound lanes of I-5 were closed Thursday night at Edgewood, north of Weed.

Caltrans spokeswoman Haleigh Pike said as of 11:30 a.m. Friday said crews and law enforcement were still working to clear vehicles that spun out due to the weather. Trucks and cars are strung out from Yreka to Dunsmuir.

"After we get them off, we have to plow the road," she said.

Nearly 15,000 Pacific Gas & Electric customers in the North State were without power.

At the peak of the outages, the harder hit areas included a stretch south and west of Redding from Anderson to Cottonwood, neighborhoods between Redding and the city of Shasta Lake, and the Highway 299 East corridor in the Montgomery Creek-Round Mountain area.

There are also widespread PG&E outages in Tehama County, according to the utility’s power outage map.

PG&E spokesman Paul Moreno said Friday morning that an estimated 6,300 customers are without power in Shasta County and nearly 8,000 without customers don't have power in Tehama County.

"Most outages occurred around 5 and 6 a.m. today so assessments still underway," Moreno said in an email to the Record Searchlight.   "Each county has several dozen distinct power outages and each will be assessed with an estimated time of restoration established. In preparation for the low snow we ensured we had tire chains for all work vehicles and snow clothing for crews."

By late Friday afternoon, Moreno said an estimated 4,700 customers were still without power in Tehama County and about 3,500 in Shasta County did not have power.

"We are restoring customers and will continue restoring into the night," Moreno said.

In Siskiyou County, an estimated 5,200 Pacific Power customers lost power in the Mount Shasta-McCloud-Dunsmuir area for about three hours early Friday morning due to a tree falling on a transmission line. But the power had been restored to all affected customers by 5 a.m., utility spokesman Tom Gauntt said.

"Obviously, lots of snow, but it's an area that the lines are pretty hardened both because of the weather we get and other recent maintenance," Gauntt said.

Redding Public Works Director Chuck Aukland said the city’s street crews started plowing roads around 12:30 a.m. Friday.

The plows focused on important thoroughfares like Hilltop Drive, Placer Street hill and roads around the city’s two hospitals, Shasta Regional Medical Center and Mercy.

Aukland said this storm doesn’t appear to have hit the city as hard as the February 2019 snow, which wreaked havoc around the area.

“I think what really got us there was the heavy weight (of the snow) on the trees. We had trees down on roads, power lines, all over the place,” he said.

Meanwhile, Amtrak's Coast Starlight, which stops in Redding, is experiencing delays north of Dunsmuir "due to a disabled freight train and inclement weather in the area," the carrier announced on Twitter.

Earlier this week, forecasters didn’t expect a lot of moisture would accompany the cold temperatures that this storm has brought.

But that changed overnight as the storm tapped into a lot of moisture.

“It did definitely, that was what allowed certainly the greater snow fall amounts that we are seeing,” Baruffaldi of the National Weather Service said. “It did fly down from the north and slid right around the coast, and as it did, it was able to pick up moisture.”

The North State is expected to dry out Saturday before another round of wet weather hits the area Sunday through Tuesday.

Sunday’s system is not expected to be as cold as the current one, but Monday and Tuesday could be different.

“It will be a somewhat similar system, Monday and Tuesday. There should be low snow elevations,” Baruffaldi said.

This article originally appeared on Redding Record Searchlight: Winter blast covers northern Sacramento Valley in snow