For many of us, winter snow is an occasional inconvenience. For those living in the Sierra Nevada region of California though, it's a way of life.
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Hello, everybody. Meteorologist Joe Martucci here with the Across the Sky podcast, Lee Enterprise's national weather podcast. I am joined this week with Sean Sublette from the Richmond Times Dispatch. Matt Holiner in the Midwest. Kirsten Lang is on maternity leave. We wish her the best. She delivered a healthy baby boy not too long ago, so congratulations to her. We miss her.
I mean, yeah, we're our big snow seasons here are 20 or 30 inches you know and they would get that in a day, you know, several hundred inches of snow this year in Tahoe. And, you know, his county there goes from from the Central Valley all the way up toward Lake Tahoe. So have a huge range in elevation there.
The snow is so high. So it was it was pretty incredible. So without further ado, we're going to turn it over to Donny Francis. And we're all about this season's snow near Lake Tahoe. So we are here with Donny Francis from Placer County in California. Here he is with the the Public Works Department. He is a road district superintendent.
So we got three snow districts. There's about nine, ten guys per district. So I think a lot of them look forward to it getting up there because they know they're going to make a lot of extra money, get to play in the snow, run heavy equipment. So that's always a morale booster until you get these record breaking storms where guys are stuck up there.
Appear to the foothills. You'll see some snow and then up to 7000 feet on Donner Summit where we got actually this year, record is 730 inches of snow. And we we plow roads at 7000 foot elevation. So to spring serene lakes, we see the most snow there. You know, I think we're we're usually right top most snow in the United States for you know and expenditures and then up to 5 million, you know, a year in snow removal.
And then you come downhill this way a little bit, actually higher elevation. When I say down the hill, our farthest north is Tahoe City, but before that's Donner Summit. And there we have four more graders, five Rotary snowball loaders, multiple push plows, because when the snow level drops, it come all the way down here to Auburn. Then we got to get our valley guys with two wheel drive plow trucks down here with chains.
And we ask for volunteers every year to go up to sort of the to go volunteer to pull snow. So, I mean, it takes at one at one time there's probably 40, 50 guys working at once just to plow snow. So in terms of the weather part of this, the weather forecast, who are you working with? Who are your weather partners or partner that you're working with throughout the winter?
I'm in the foothills, actually, so I'm right in the middle of it all. But I've worked in every district we have in my 22 years here. So I've seen the flooding, the snow that we had early winter. We had trees, low snow, which brought down tons of trees. So then we go into tree clearing mode and then we had to hire contractors for that.
For instance, in serene lakes, the walls are 20 feet high and sometimes you don't know where you're blowing it. You have to experience burying in propane tanks, putting it on people's roofs. We blow it windows quite often because you just can't see where it's going. So, yeah, it's a a process of pushing it off the road and then your roads get so narrow, you're down to one lane or you close them.
We're here with Donny Francis from the Plaza County partment of Public Works. We're talking all about their crazy snow they had this past week. They're on the Across the Sky podcast. Back with you after the break. Roger. Okay. And you were saying you actually plow some of the ski resorts as well. Tell us about that. Well, we have to we have three actually. Tahoma has one to our main ski resorts or Palisades Olympic Valley, which used to be Squaw Valley. They held the Olympics there in the sixties. The Winter Olympics. And then we have Alpine Meadows.
So two Springs area. So they have a few different areas, zones we call them. And then Tahoe City, we have ten zones. So normally you start your zone at point A and B, right? So but on these heavy storms, you just by the time you get halfway through zone, you can't even tell you plowed. So prioritizing by main roads and main accesses.
So we're going to make these other ones exceedingly low priority and just let the snow pile up. Is there anything like that going on at all? Rarely, because we have residents that need, you know, access in and out. So we rarely let anything go. But we did this year have to leave some while we concentrated on the main arteries.
I don't think anybody flocks here to work, but it's mostly local people, a lot of people that have grown up here and, you know, they know they know what's happened and where we get snow and where we don't. Do you run up against people who have relocated there recently and really have had to learn what this is all about or most of the people that that are in your service area have been there a long time and they kind of get it.
Is there one in particular, though, from just chit chatting with the guys as they're coming back and forth, coming in for a quick break and going back out? Is there one story in particular from from this season that stands out to you? Not really. I mean, you get a lot of there's a lot of good in that. You get more complaints than you do, you know, pats on the back.
I haven't seen anything bigger than probably a square mile. Okay. So usually there is multiple avalanches in years like this. They may come down on the highway. There is a self triggered avalanche control. The Alpine meadows does they set off, you know, compression bombs and cause them themselves. And sometimes it covers our road. We have to clean them up, but don't usually see a lot of avalanches that consume buildings or people, you know.
We got new graders this year, we got new blowers, so we're getting up to date with equipment. Finally, I think our oldest piece of equipment is like a 95 blower, which is about done. Yeah, I bet, especially after this winter.
But yeah, there's already some warnings for the well, this was very eye opening, especially if you live in a place that doesn't get snow. But even for the three of us or who are low on the snow totem pole, Midwesterners and mid-Atlantic people here, it was really interesting to hear your insight. Dani, anything else you'd like to add before we wrap up with the podcast or I just wish I had some pictures to show you and we'll do the video series next time.
That was in 2010, 2011. And some places didn't even see 10% of that or excuse me, that was only not even 10% of what some places up by him saw for the winter. Still chilly, incomprehensible amount of snow. Now, what what did you think of the interview? Well, you know, the mountains are just a whole nother a whole nother animal of your if you're a plains person like me, you know, in much of the Midwest where it is, it's pretty flat.
But it's important work, too. I mean, gosh, you know, all the people that are being impacted and, you know, people need to get on with their lives, need to get to school, get to work, but they need help to get to work and get to school. And folks like Bonnie and his crews make it happen. So shout out to them for dealing with one heck of a winter again.
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