Nodding glumly toward 15-foot walls of snow on each side of the narrow lane he lives on, Scheckter said, “This is a dangerous situation, and there will be impacts, including structural damage to homes and businesses buried under deeper and deeper layers of heavy snow.”Ī three-day storm a week ago triggered power outages in communities north of Bridgeport, about 50 miles to the north of Mammoth Lakes, after several large avalanches buried a half-mile stretch of Highway 395 above Mono Lake and north of Lee Vining, a gateway in warmer months to Yosemite National Park. “The problem is that snow continues to stack up, because this has been an unusually cold winter with very little runoff.” “This is the roughest winter I’ve been through since I moved here in 1978,” said Howard Scheckter, a real estate broker who doubles as the region’s weather sage, posting daily forecasts on his Mammoth Weather website. With the eastern Sierra Nevada saddled with 243% of its normal snowpack for this time of year, the DWP was scrambling to steer anticipated snowmelt from its century-old water infrastructure in Inyo County’s Owens Valley, about 60 miles south of Mammoth Lakes. “We expect to get another 100 inches of snow within 10 days, which could put us above our all-time record of 668 inches - that’s about 55½ feet - at the main lodge.” “This is already one of our biggest snow years ever - and we still have many more months to go,” said Lauren Burke, a spokeswoman for the resort about 300 miles north of Los Angeles. ![]() “We have at least two more storms coming in over the next 10 days, so the big concern is all the precipitation on the mountains coming down all at once.”Īs of this week, Mammoth Mountain - the massive extinct volcano that catches freshly brewed storms like a sail - had recorded a stunning 672 inches of snow at the summit and 528 inches at the main lodge of its resort complex, which attracts a million skiers each year. “Getting significant rain on top of snow is a scary proposition,” Inyo County Supervisor Jeff Griffiths said Friday, when the first of several anticipated atmospheric rivers swept across the region, triggering warnings of avalanches and wind gusts of 120 mph. At the same time, officials with the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power are worried that record runoff in Mono and Inyo counties could overwhelm the city’s network of aqueducts. Highway 395, which winds along the base of snow-clad Sierra peaks that reach up to 14,000 feet. In a worst-case scenario, massive snowmelt in the coming weeks could inundate towns along U.S. While ski operators in the eastern Sierra Nevada are hoping the buildup of snow will allow them to stay open as late as July 4, the storms have added a dangerous edge to life in nearby towns as residents confront impenetrable snowbanks, high winds, road closures, avalanches and flooding. Snow began falling early and hard this season at the Mammoth Mountain ski resort, and the record-breaking amounts don’t look like they’ll stop anytime soon.
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