Mammoth Mountain
California ski resort sinks under 20 meters of snow
In California, there has been extreme rainfall again. While this causes flooding at lower altitudes from which thousands have to flee, the mountains are engulfed in snow.
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A ski lift chair hangs on this bracket.
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Although the lift doesn’t work, you can simply pull yourself up the ropes in the Mammoth Mountain ski area.
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There is also a lot of snow at lower altitudes.
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According to the operators, 15 meters of snow has already fallen in the California ski area this season.
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There is even 20 meters of snow on the summit itself.
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The mountain and valley stations of the railways are slowly but surely also filled with snow.
And the flurry of snow continues: another meter could fall in the next few days.
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Meanwhile, in the rest of the state, the very heavy rainfall is manifested by flooding.
REUTERS
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California is currently facing record-breaking rainfall.
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While thousands have to flee floods in the lowlands, the mountains are covered in snow.
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There are already 20 meters on Mammoth Mountain – but there could be more.
Already had to at the weekend Thousands of people from flooding flee – now the US state of California is being hit again by severe storms. “Very heavy” rainfall is expected in southern California on Tuesday, especially in the region around the cities of Santa Barbara and Los Angeles, the US weather service warned late Monday evening (local time). Flooding is to be expected as the soil has already been saturated by the rainfall of the past few months. Mudslides and landslides are also likely, it said.
On Mammoth Mountain, a volcanic complex in eastern California, the Precipitation meanwhile in the form of snow. This brought operations in the ski area of the same name, with almost 200 kilometers of slopes, to a standstill, as the pictures show. As the operators told FoxLA at the beginning of the week, more than 15 meters of snow has fallen so far this season. This puts you just under two meters away from the all-time record that was set in 2010.
There is almost 20 meters of snow on the summit of Mammoth Mountain. While the white mass in the valley mainly covers houses and makes life difficult for the evacuation personnel, whole ski lift chairs disappear in the snow masses – only the bracket is still sticking out. Up to one meter of snow is again expected at higher altitudes next week – with a bit of bad luck, the all-time record could even fall.
“Atmospheric flow” brings weather chaos
Since January, the state on the west coast of the country, which has often been plagued by dryness and drought in the past, has been repeatedly hit by unusually heavy rainfall. An unusual amount of snow fell in higher elevations in California. A dam along the Pajaro River in central California, south of Santa Cruz, broke over the weekend. One adjoining community was floodedLocal residents were urged to leave their homes and go to higher ground.
reason for the heavy rainfall is a weather phenomenon called “atmospheric flow”. According to the German Weather Service, this means “a relatively narrow, directional band of humid-saturated air” that can be up to 500 kilometers wide and 2,000 kilometers long. Such systems transported a large part of the water vapor outside the tropics.