Nov. 11--A massive storm that dropped snow across hundreds of miles of the Sierra Nevada is paying dividends for winter resorts, if social media is any indicator.
From Lake Tahoe and Mt. Rose to Mammoth Mountain, vacation destinations have taken to Twitter to boast that their slopes are ready for visitors.
"FRESH SNOW last night and still snowing!" read a tweet from Mt. Rose Ski Tahoe alongside a picture of benches and hillsides blanketed in white.
"New snow on @MammothMountain. Looking TASTY!" read a tweet from Mammoth Mountain's tourism account.
In about two days, up to 36 inches of snow was dumped on Mammoth's summit, while folks at slightly lower elevations saw up to 20 inches of snow. The northern half of the storm over Lake Tahoe dropped as much as 12 inches of snow, the most in years, officials said.
The weather system that swung over Northern California had the telltale signs of the routine seasonal systems that flow south from the northern Pacific; they're colder and dropping snow at lower elevations than a warmer El Nitorm would, said Karl Swanberg, a National Weather Service forecaster in Sacramento.
Regardless, "we need moisture, no matter how it comes," Swanberg said.
Alex Hoon, an NWS meteorologist in Reno, said he drove north from Mammoth on Tuesday and was in awe of the landscape.
"It was beautiful. Everything is blinding white ... fresh white snow," he said.
The weather is a boon for sports shops and ski resorts across the Sierra Nevada, but it's too early whether it's a harbinger of a snowy winter closer to the historical average that could help California's vital snowpack.
"It's really too early to answer that. ... We're probably a little bit below normal," Swanberg cautioned. "With the lowest snowpack on record last year, anything's an improvement."
Indeed, a combination of years of drought and media hype over an upcoming El Niay magnify the attention to any precipitation as something other than normal, Swanberg said.
And welcome as it is, the early November dump of white means little in terms of building a hefty winter snowpack that could help ease the drought.
"The snow that typically will fall in November isn't always the snow that lasts the entire winter," noted National Weather Service meteorologist Brooke Bingaman. "What we're really going to rely on is the snowpack that falls in the second half of the winter, particularly January and February."
The key date for California's snowpack is five months away: April 1, when the mountain snowpack is customarily at its peak and state hydrologists know roughly how much melt water it will produce to help fill reservoirs in the spring and early summer. This year, the statewide snowpack on that date was an abysmal 5% of average, the lowest in more than 60 years of record keeping.
Technically the water content of snow, the snowpack acts as nature's reservoir, typically providing about a third of California's water supply.
"We'd love to see a whole series of these, measured out tablespoon by tablespoon all winter long," said Kelly Redmond, regional climatologist at the Western Regional Climate Center in Reno.
Extraordinary as it may seem after four years of drought, the snowfall accumulation of the recent Sierra Nevada storms is about average for this time of year, Bingaman said. "Once we get into November, that's when we get a more regular occurrence of storms .... So far this month, it's pretty much clockwork."
Forecasters continue to predict a strong El Nino this winter, but the storms could be warmer, producing more rain than snow. Moreover, Redmond said,
"It's worth remembering, of the last four drought winters, two of them started out very promising: On the wet side and then just pooped out."
"It's a good teaser," he said of the storm that draped the valleys near Reno with 18 inches of snow. "Even just an average winter would be great."
At Mammoth Lakes, ski and snowboarding slopes there opened earlier than scheduled after a storm last week, said business owner Rick Flamson.
"If you believe the weather people -- and I'm a little bit of a weather buff myself -- it seems to me that yes, we're all very optimistic it's going to be a better winter," said Flamson, owner of Rick's Sports Center, a local mainstay for 25 years. "Last year at this time, the ski area was just opening. I'm looking straight out this front door at the snow out there. I would imagine this weekend I get an email from the town, and it looks like we're more booked."
But the storms also brought complications. Some areas were overwhelmed, and roads were closed temporarily, he said. Utility customers on the Nevada side of Tahoe have been coping with a power outage after branches weighed down with snow snapped and took out electrical lines, Hoon said.
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Nevada Energy said it was a "severe" storm that caused "widespread" power outages.
The weather service said the total snowfall marked one of the biggest single storms the region has seen in several years.
The storm also brought heavy rain to coastal areas of Northern California. In Monterey, San Benito, Santa Cruz and Santa Clara counties, more than an inch of rain fell in some areas. The Bay Area saw less rainfall but more than 500 lightning strikes. Strong wind gusts also were reported, according to the National Weather Service.
For breaking California news, follow @JosephSerna.
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