A powerful blizzard raged in the Sierra Nevada as the biggest storm of the season shut down a long stretch of I-80 in California.

Palisades and Alpine Meadows ski resorts open with limited lifts after an avalanche at Palisades resulted in one fatality and prompted avalanche warnings in the Sierra backcountry.

The combination has resulted in some of the US' most destructive and costly floods, including the 1996 Midwest floods and the 2017 flood that damaged California’s Oroville Dam

This winter is the snowiest on Donner Summit in the Sierra Nevada mountains since reliable snow measurement began in 1971.

With even more rain and snow predicted to hit Lake Tahoe on Friday. Officials warn of dangerously heavy snow on homes.

For decades, Californians have depended on the reliable appearance of spring and summer snowmelt to provide nearly a third of the state's supply of water. But as the state gets drier, and as wildfires climb to ever-higher elevations, that precious snow is melting faster and earlier than in years past — even in the middle of winter.

Following a year of both extreme heat and drought, Lake Tahoe has seen a record breaking amount of snow this December.

Professional skier Amie Engerbretson is already noticing diminishing snow in her hometown of Lake Tahoe. She didn’t know what to do this past Thanksgiving because she couldn’t ski for the first time since she could remember. “The ski seasons are shrinking, and a lot of times the storms are coming in with more rain,” she says. “I can remember being a little girl with 19-foot snow banks in my front yard. I certainly haven't seen snow banks that high as an adult.”

Barring significant precipitation this summer, Lake Tahoe's water level is on track to reach a critical low.

Young black bears, with no fear of people, are coming down with fatal brain inflammation in Nevada and California. Could new viruses be causing the disease? State veterinarians say that in the past 12 months alone, officials have captured three other bears with the same condition.

Hurricanes have dominated weather news lately. When it snowed on Thursday in the Sierra Nevada, it not only added a new weather element to the news mix, it got resorts thinking about ski season.

Scientists say climate change is causing Lake Tahoe to warm sooner in the spring than it has historically, disrupting the normal mixing of shallow and deep water and undercutting gains made in reversing the loss of clarity of the cobalt mountain lake.