Thousands of residents were left without power, and life came to a standstill for many in the Sierra Nevada region on Saturday after a winter storm dumped as much as two feet of snow overnight and created treacherous conditions.
About 49,000 customers in Nevada and California were without electricity on Saturday morning, according to PowerOutage.us.
With whiteout conditions in the mountains, ski resorts in the Lake Tahoe area paused operations.
And highway officials shut down Interstate 80, the main artery that traverses the Sierra Nevada over Donner Summit, a key trucking route from the San Francisco Bay Area.
Palisades Tahoe, a resort that closed ski area operations on Saturday across all terrain, reported 24 inches of new snow in the past 24 hours.
Persons:
Organizations:
Donner Summit, San, Patrol, Sierra Snow Laboratory
Locations:
Sierra Nevada, Nevada, California, San Francisco Bay Area, Donner