Wild California Snow Continues to Endanger Mountain Residents; Videos Included

A bit of snow on the ground in the
mountains of California. Image from
Twitter by @cartermurphy218

Sure, we got some snow here in Vermont on Saturday. At worst, it was inconvenient. Roads were lousy Saturday morning during the heaviest snow. Many of us have had to shovel it away. A slight pain for those Vermonters who are not huge winter enthusiasts. But still, no biggie. 

But Vermont's weather was just a single snowflake fluttering down from the sky compared to the recent weather in California. 

The snow in California has largely ended in the San Bernardino mountains in southern California after dumping up to nine feet or so of snow. In the Sierra Nevada mountains, another big dump of snow is ongoing. 

The San Bernardino mountain communities are in crisis. People have been stranded with dwindling food supplies for a good week. Needed medications have run out. Some houses have no heat. Some people will be snowbound and stranded for another week or so.  

Though it regularly snows in the mountains of San Bernardino County, it's never like this.  People up near Lake Tahoe and Mammoth Mountain get storms like this and can sort of handle them. But the mountains outside of Los Angeles can't manage many feet of snow. 

Lake Arrowhead near the town of Crestline, received 109 inches of snow in seven days. Their average snowfall for the entire winter is just 22 inches. 

 Gov. Gavin Newsom has declared a state of emergency in the hard regions, and that likely lead to more snow clearing crews and equipment for the mountains. 

However, residents are frustrated that help has not yet arrived.  

"There's all these promises of snow plow s are coming, our  help is on the way, or food distribution is being set up, and for five days we've seen none of that," Crestline, California, resident Aging Sedler told ABC7 Los Angeles.

At least one death has been reported.  An 80 year od woman died when the porch she was on collapsed under the weight of snow. 

Meanwhile, people are hunkered down, food is running out and in some cases, roofs are caving in. 

As the Associated Press reports: 

"In Crestline, the entire roof of Goodwin and Sons Market collapsed Wednesday as safety inspectors were onsite checking up on reported damage. Officials raced to salvage food that residents sorely need from its shelves."

That store was the only grocery store in town. 

Somebody in Crestline wrote in large letters "HELP US" in the snow for helicopters to find. 

Ih Placer County, an avalanche hit a three story apartment building, burying all but the top floor. Luckily nobody was hurt. 

Video on social media show houses that resemble caves, with a small hole in the snow offering access to front doors. Back roads that have been cleared resemble canyons, with eight feet or more of snow on either side of the narrow lanes. 

Some houses have caught fire or exploded in the San Bernardino mountains. At least seven houses caught fire in that region, possibly due to gas leaks or gas meter problems created by these devices being buried in snow. 

Yosemite National Park is closed because it is pretty much inaccessible because of the snow. 

In lower elevations, snow flurries fell in areas that had not seen snow in many decades. At Disneyland in Anaheim, California, snow fell on park visitors. And it was real snow, not something concocted by Elsa from "Frozen."

The latest storm this weekend is hitting the Sierra Nevada range pretty hard. But, mercifully, only a small amount go snow is falling on the mountains of San Bernardino County. 

Temperatures are expected to remain below normal in California all week, but will still be a little milder than in recent days. That might prompt a small amount of the snow to melt, but unfortunately it will not be a major thaw in the San Bernardino Mountains. 

I posted some videos last week of the intense rain storm in the lowest elevations of southern California and unusually low elevation snows.

The snow in the higher elevations keeps coming, and so do the videos. 

WXChasing gave us a taste of what the infamous Donner Pass has been like in this stormy period. Click on this link or if you see image below, click on that: 

ABC7 has a great round-up video of the dustings of snow in lower elevations of California that basically never get snow, and the feet of snow that has piled up in higher elevations. Again, either click on this link to view, or if you see the image below, click on that:

Here's a nice video from Fox 11 in Los Angeles of young residents in the snow zone helping out others: Again click on this link or click on image below if you see it: 

Here's a great story about Marley, a dog lost in the deep mountain California snow for 17 days. Marley's mom was taking her up into the mountains to see the snow, but they hit black ice and crashed. As is often the case io car crashes, Marley panicked and ran off. 

But somebody in these snow-buried mountains left food out every night for stray animals. After a lot of effort a couple of people manage to capture Marley and keep him in their home until it was safe to bring  the pup back down the mountain to his family.  

Click on this link to view, or if you see the image below, click on that: 

And this one is kind of sad. A man trying to take care of his frail, diabetic mother, and the roof collapsed at their home under the weight of the snow: