These ski resorts are closed because there's just too much snow
Turns out you can have too much of a good thing.
The Lake Tahoe area on the California-Nevada border has been dumped with snow -- perfect for the middle of prime skiing and snowboarding season.
But the storm affecting the western U.S. this week is just too much. And the Tahoe resorts just can't take it. It's beyond dumping (which is painfully ironic after barely any snow in past years) with another half-foot to a foot more of snow expected in the Sierra Nevada Mountains by Friday morning, according to the National Weather Service.
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Almost all of the resorts were closed Wednesday and some had shut down earlier this week because of the storm. At Kirkwood Mountain Resort, operators decided after 9 feet of snow in the past few days they needed time to dig out and keep the mountain safe. In a post Wednesday afternoon they wrote "This has been a #storm for the books," next to a photo showing one of their lifts almost buried.
Squaw Valley, famous for hosting the 1960 Olympics, said they were out of commission because of a storm-related power outage. The outage was affecting a few other resorts, as well.
At the Sierra-at-Tahoe resort they posted about Wednesday's closure after more than 3 feet of snow fell in 24 hours. "The conditions that Mother Nature is giving us make it extremely difficult to operate the mountain safely," they wrote Tuesday afternoon. They added, "Extreme snowfall, low visibility, high winds, and avalanche danger exist all over the mountain."
That's the message nearly all the resorts are posting online to eager skiers and snowboarders. The only resort that was operating some lifts seemed to be Heavenly on the Nevada side of the resort. Others posted about expected openings on Thursday.
But before a break in the storm, the resort closures kept coming Wednesday as the storm continued inundating the area (and beyond) with rain and snow. At least Interstate 80, one of the main access points to the Tahoe area, reopened Wednesday afternoon. It had been closed near the Nevada border in both directions after more than 6 feet of snow fell.
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So basically in one of the best places to ski and play in the snow you can't because of snow. It's almost cruel.
Sasha is a news writer at Mashable's San Francisco office. She's an SF native who went to UC Davis and later received her master's from the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. She's been reporting out of her hometown over the years at Bay City News (news wire), SFGate (the San Francisco Chronicle website), and even made it out of California to write for the Chicago Tribune. She's been described as a bookworm and a gym rat.
