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.
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.
In a worst-case scenario, massive snowmelt in the coming weeks could inundate towns along U.S. Highway 395, which winds along the base of snow-clad Sierra peaks that reach up to 14,000 feet.
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.
“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.
“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.”
As of this week, Mammoth Mountain — the massive extinct volcano that catches freshly brewed storms like a sail — had recorded a stunning 672 inches of snowat the summit and 528 inches at the main lodge of its resort complex, which attracts a million skiers each year.
“This is already one of our biggest snow years ever — and we still have another month to go,” said Lauren Burke, a spokeswoman for the resort about 300 miles north of Los Angeles. “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.”
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.
The 11,000-foot summit of Mammoth Mountain has recorded 672 inches of snow.
“Only two out of the last 100 years have experienced higher runoff than this year’s estimate,” said Anselmo Collins, senior assistant general manager of the water system. “Right now, DWP crews are mainly focusing on maintaining capacity within the system by cleaning sand traps, canals and other waterways and getting areas ready for the anticipated water flows.”
Meanwhile, in Mammoth Lakes, a scenic town of 7,500 people in Mono County, residents are struggling to adapt to what has become an eerie world of frozen precipitation piled as high as rooftops.
Street names have been hand-painted on walls of snow where signposts are no longer visible. Property owners clad in heavy coats and rubber boots endure the ear-splitting roar of snowblowers between banks 20 feet high that test the limits of the equipment. Underfoot, the snow has turned to ice thick enough to skate on.
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