You are now in California and the U.S. category.

A powerful and unrelenting winter blast coated the Northern Sierra Nevada this winter. Back-to-back storms buried the Lake Tahoe area in snow, crippling transportation, shuttering ski resorts, knocking out power and disrupting the daily lives of thousands. In the first three weeks of January alone, the region received nearly a full winter’s worth of snow, and then came February, and the Sierra Nevada was slammed yet again with moisture-packed storms fueled by weather systems known as atmospheric rivers.

Mitch Brown jammed the blade of his loader into a two-story pile of snow outside Donner Ski Shop, the sports rental store he runs. From there, Old Highway 40 toward bustling ski resorts was lined with walls of snow more than 20 feet high. “It snowed nearly 24 feet in 12 days,” Brown said recently. “We’ve been working 18-hour days to clear it. This winter’s bumper crop of snow — on the heels of the worst drought in 500 years — underscores the threat to this central source of water for western Nevada County and most of California.

Congressman Doug LaMalfa (R-Richvale) issued the following statement after sending a letter, along with many of his colleagues in the California congressional delegation, urging President Trump to take immediate action to facilitate the work required to repair the two Oroville Dam spillways that were damaged in the February 2017 storm events. The damage forced the mandatory evacuation of nearly 200,000 residents, and President Trump responded by declaring a Major Emergency and authorizing the Federal Emergency Management Agency to assist local and state officials and provide aid to evacuees.