Cold storm leads to spinouts, closures

Heavy snow falls on downtown Sonora Monday morning. Amy Alonzo Rozak/Union Democrat, copyright 2009

However, the storm was good news for ski areas. Dodge Ridge Ski Resort in Pinecrest announced this morning that it will open Friday after receiving two feet of snow at the base and three feet at the summit.
  

Bear Valley Mountain Resort in Alpine County will open Saturday. It received more than three feet of snow Monday.

Among the casualties from the pre-winter storm were a group of motorists who ended up in a ditch off of Mono Way near the Restano Way in Sonora due to the slick conditions Monday morning, and 6,300 people who found themselves without power in Tuolumne County at some point in the day due to heavy, snow-laden branches touching down on power lines.

In Calaveras and Amador counties, around 25,000 people combined were affected by outages.

Officer Mike Buller, of the Jamestown California Highway Patrol Office, illustrated the chaos Monday morning.

“We’ve had quite a few reports of traffic collisions,” he said. “We’re just going from crash to crash. They’re everywhere — Parrotts Ferry Road, Jamestown Road, Soulsbyville, Tuolumne. Anywhere there’s people moving, they’re crashing.”

Much of the west side of Washington Street in downtown Sonora was without power from around 10:30 a.m. to 1 p.m., including the historic Superior Courthouse and A.N. Francisco Building. A humming generator kept the lights on at the nearby County Administration Center.

The combination of a cold, dry air mass from Canada and moisture from the Pacific Ocean was to blame for the severe weather, according to Sacramento-based National Weather Service meteorologist Holly Osborne.

The weather system was so cold that it brought snow to low elevations. Not even the generally warm Don Pedro and Copperopolis were spared.

Three inches of snow fell in Jamestown, with 5 inches in Sonora and Angels Camp, 8 inches in Phoenix Lake and Soulsbyville, nearly 9 inches in Twain Harte and more than 2 feet in higher elevations.

Snow even hit Stockton, at 27 feet above sea level, for the first time since 1976, according to Osborne. Stockton also set an all-time record-low temperature of 23 degrees.

Interstate 5 over the Grapevine south of Bakersfield also was closed Monday night because of snow.

The high country in Calaveras County was hit with around 2 to 3 feet of snow, according to Osborne.

The good news is the low-elevation snowfall was largely complete by Monday afternoon, Osborne said. The bad news is without cloud cover to keep the warmth in, today started off extremely cold, with roads very slick in many places.

Tuolumne County Public Works Director Peter Rei was gearing up for the new round of bad road conditions. On Monday, his department was busy plowing in all corners of the county, a rare situation considering snow usually doesn’t fall below 1,500 feet in the area.

“We’re hearing that the snow is over, that it will be crystal clear with a very hard freeze,” Rei said. “It will literally be like an ice-skating rink.”   

Rei took a big preemptive safety measure Monday afternoon: He opened the Sullivan Creek bridge on Phoenix Lake Road. But he was forced to open the bridge, which is currently being repaired, because the Highway Patrol closed Crystal Falls Drive, which had been used as a detour.

Buller had some advice in the face of the chilly weather: “If you don’t have to travel, don’t.”

Sonora’s nighttime low Monday was around 18 degrees — a record low, according to the National Weather Service. Today’s high in Sonora is expected to be 38 degrees, followed by a nighttime low of 21 degrees.

Angels Camp, meanwhile, hit around 21 degrees Monday night. Today’s high there is expected to reach 40 degrees, followed by a nighttime low of 26 degrees.

The National Weather Service didn’t have data available by press time on record lows in Angels Camp.

The wet weather isn’t over, according to Osborne. She said a fairly small storm will move into the Mother Lode from the Pacific Ocean on Thursday, but the snow-level will be around 4,000 feet, meaning rain — not snow — this time around in the lower elevations.

A second Pacific storm is expected to come to the region Sunday.

“There is still some uncertainly about precipitation amounts for the weekend system,” Osborne said.