And that’s not because it’s been a particularly dry winter, he explained. It’s because it’s the warmest winter the West has ever seen.
“In the Western U.S., the snowpack is, on average, terrible,” Swain said. “It’s about as bad as it’s ever been in observed history.”
This warm winter creates a wrinkle: While the season’s rain has turned hillsides green, temperatures haven’t been cold enough at low enough elevations to bring as much snow as usual.
Truckee Holds Candlelight Vigil Amid a Tragic February
The town of Truckee in the Sierra held a candlelight vigil last night, amid a string of tragedies in the last few weeks has thrust the small mountain community into the national spotlight.
Last night’s vigil was organized by Truckee’s Vice Mayor, Courtney Henderson, and was held at the Eagle Statue in downtown. The event comes on the heels of the deadliest avalanche in California history.
The avalanche blanketed the region near Castle Peak at Donner Summit on Tuesday. A group of 15 back-country skiers were caught in the disaster. A total of nine people died in the avalanche. Search and rescue crews were slowed by strong gusts and heavy snow throughout the week–before avalanche mitigation efforts and calmer weather conditions allowed them to recover the bodies of the nine victims on Friday and Saturday.
Four of the victims had connections to the Bay Area.
Henderson told KQED that the avalanche came at a time when Truckee was already grappling with the aftermath of two incidents that took place earlier in the month.
On February 7th, a man was arrested after he drove his car into a little league baseball team as they were fundraising outside a Safeway grocery store on Donner Pass Road. The man injured four children and four adults.
About a week later, a 15-year-old opened fire on a group of people during an altercation in the parking lot of a different grocery store. Nobody was injured in the shooting.
As attendees left flowers and written messages at the site of the vigil to honor those lost, Henderson shared a message of togetherness during these dark times.
The Vice Mayor said, “Grief has a way of making us feel very small and very isolated. My deepest hope for tonight is that you feel the opposite. Held by the hundreds of neighbors who showed up tonight because that is simply what we do.”