More than 75,000 residents and businesses have lost power in the state, and Governor Gavin Newsom has declared a state of emergency. He told the press on Thursday the state government was “contracting with private companies to accelerate snow removal and clear roadways, and is coordinating with investor-owned utilities to rapidly restore power.”
At least one woman has died from the storm: an 80-year-old woman whose porch collapsed under the weight of the snow.
For the most part, the snow has been confined to the state’s eastern and northern mountain ranges, but the snow came down to lower altitudes in the Los Angeles area on Wednesday, giving visitors to the city’s famous beaches a rare treat.
One person even captured snow falling at Disneyland, in southern LA.
The contrast of the Los Angeles skyline, the "Hollywood" sign, and the snowy mountains was also too much for some photographers to pass up.
However, the snow is hardly a treat up in the mountains, where digging out residents could take more than a week. Mountain parks such as Yosemite are indefinitely closed after becoming totally impassable.
“This has definitely been the biggest storm so far of the season,” a public relations manager at a mountain resort told the media. "In the High Sierra, it comes all at once. It’s pretty insane to see this amount of snow.”
According to scientific measurement sites in the Donner Pass, the main mountain pass from northern California across the Sierra Nevada mountains, more than 44 feet of snow has fallen in the 2022-2023 winter so far. However, that’s still far short of the all-time record of 67 feet in one season, set during the 1951-1952 winter.
The snow wasn’t confined to California, though: it stretched across Nevada and Arizona, too, where residents were treated to the rare sight of saguaro cacti piled high in the white fluff.
Thanks to all the snow, California has been imparted some much-needed water, and the US Drought Monitor said on Thursday that all categories of drought across the state had dropped by half as compared to just a week earlier.
However, more snow is on the way, including up to two more feet for the Yosemite area.