SOUTH LAKE TAHOE, Calif. — Another California ski resort has moved up its opening day thanks to this week’s huge dump of snow in the Sierra Nevada.
Palisades Tahoe joins Mammoth Mountain in starting its season on Oct. 29. Palisades Tahoe says the big storm dropped more than 3 feet of snow on its upper mountains. Boreal Mountain has also announced they plan to open early too, its earliest opening in a decade.
"We get enough in October to end the mountain biking season, but never so much to get the ski season started," Alex Spychalsky, Palisades Tahoe spokesperson said. "It was really that heavy Sierra (Nevada Mountains) cement you need to really cover the rock, brush and things like that on the trail."
In its 72-year history, only two other heavy snow incidents prompted the early opening of the ski resort.
The resort plans to be open on weekends only as conditions allow until full-time operations begin on Nov. 24. Mammoth moved up its opening by two weeks to Oct. 29 even before the storm arrived.
"It's not going to be fresh powder skiing just because we got a bunch of snow this week, but it is going to be really fun to be able to get on your skis in October — you can ski on Halloween," Spychalsky said.
The amount of rain that fell in Reno the last two days was nearly as much as the previous 12 months combined as rainfall records fell across much of northern Nevada.
The National Weather Service said Tuesday the 2.92 inches of rain recorded at Reno-Tahoe International Airport Sunday and Monday was the highest two-day total ever in October. It was just .09 inch shy of rainfall for the entire previous water year running Oct. 1, 2020, to Sept. 30, 2021.
Other new records included one that stood for 125 years in Ely, where 1.05 inches smashed the old mark of .25 set in 1896.
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