markleville

SOUTH LAKE TAHOE, Calif. - Fog is normally associated with San Francisco and the coastal cities of California, not with Lake Tahoe.

On Friday and Saturday, a strong inversion was in place at around the 7,000-7,500 foot level, compressing the molecules that normally evaporate off of the lake and keeping them trapped closer to the ground and the lake.

Inversions exist on a fairly common schedule, but the experience the past two days was different for a couple of reasons:

4:00 p.m. UPDATE: Interstate 80 has reopened at this time, but tractor-semitrailer combinations are not allowed due to traction concerns. SR88 is closed at the Carson Spur with no time estimated of reopening.Hwy 50 over Echo Summit is reopened after a collision was cleared. Most roads in the Sierra are requiring chains or 4WD with snow tires.

There's only a few more hours to register to volunteer for the 19th Earth Day Restoration and Cleanup Event at California State Parks on on Saturday, April 22. The closest opportunity for those in the Lake Tahoe area is at Grover Hot Springs.

From 9:00 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., volunteers will be doing maintenance and development of the Native Plant Demonstration Garden, weed removal and landscaping at the park in Markleville, 30 miles south of South Lake Tahoe.

Two Markleville, Calif., men were arrested on December 17 after a Department of Fish Wildlife warden caught them near Diamond Valley Road and Airport Road (Alpine County) as they attempted to "spotlight" deer.

According to Lt. Chris Stoots of California Fish & Wildlife, Ramsey Gene Horse, 29, and William Eugene Berreman, 26, were allegedly driving a Ford sedan with an artificial light in an attempt to spot and kill deer, an illegal action called spotlighting. They also had two loaded rifles in the back seat.

As people starts to dig out from an overnight storm, holiday travelers will be heading home while others hit the slopes. Expect traffic to be slow over Echo Summit.

Heavenly Mountain Resort: 9" of snow in the last 24 hours. The resort will have 1 percent of the mountain open: 35/4800 acres, 5/28 lifts open, 5/97 runs open.

Kirkwood: 14" of snow in the last 24 hours. The resort will have 3 percent of their terrain open: 60/2300 acres, 3/15 lifts and 6/86 runs.

Sierra at Tahoe: 16" (base) to 24"(summit) of snow in the last 24 hours. They will have 4 lifts and 3 trails open.

12:30 p.m. update February 18:

The sun is coming out over Lake Tahoe after a quick moving storm left over two feet of snow at the upper elevations, one foot at lake level.

Chain controls remain at this time, with chains are required on all vehicles except 4WD with snow tires on all 4 wheels from Meyers to Twin Bridges.

The snow forecast for Monday night arrived this morning in South Lake Tahoe, prompting morning commute road controls and school news.

All Lake Tahoe Unified Schools are open with no delays Tuesday morning,

Douglas County schools at the lake are "main bus stops only."

The Douglas County bus stops are designated as:

The corner of Tina Court and Ski Court for students living in the Tramway and Kingsbury Village area:

WHS - Bus will arrive at 6:35 a.m. and depart at 6:57 a.m.
ZCES - Bus will arrive at 7:55 a.m. and depart at 8:22 a.m.

Heavy rains over the past 48 hours have given firefighters the help they needed to contain the Washington Fire burning south of Markleeville.

As of 5 p.m. on July 4, the lightning caused fire was 99% contained after burning 17,790 acres.

Fire crews will continue to construct the remaining fire line and mop up hot spots along the perimeter. A smaller contingency of firefighters and equipment will remain on the incident with the type 3 management organization while still meeting incident objectives as outlined in the transfer of command.

6:00 p.m. update 6/29/15

Firefighters made a lot of progress on the fire lines at the Washington Fire south of Markleeville on Monday, gaining containment of 56% of the perimeter. So far, 17,787 acres have burned.

The lightning caused fire grew quickly a week ago, from 30 acres on June 19 to 6,500 acres by June 21.

At one time, over 1,100 fire personnel were working on suppression of the fire. Those numbers were reduced today to 860 as containment grew.

Liberty Utilities has cancelled the planned power outage scheduled for parts of Alpine County due to the current Washington Fire in the Markleeville area.

The outage was scheduled for June 24th and July 1st to allow Liberty crews to replace some power poles in the area.

Liberty will notify its customers when this necessary maintenance will occur once new
dates have been scheduled.

1:35 p.m. update on 6/23/15

The fire figures were updated this afternoon. At 8 a.m. they report almost 16,000 acres, then downsized a bit at noon to 13,562 after analyzing infrared reports. The 1:35 p.m. update is as follows:

The Washington Fire is actively burning. It is spreading due to both fuel-and-slope-driven forces and in some some drainages off of the East Fork Carson River. It has also spread to the north and to the east.

Fire is burning in hazardous and inaccessible terrain and approaching an increasing number of structures and impacting travel corridors.

A car crash on Highway 88 near Hope Valley Resort claimed the life of a 29-year-old Markleville man on Sunday afternoon.

My daughter and I had been planning our annual Apple Hill trek for several days when I decided to change it up a bit. Since my free time is so rare I figured why not include a visit to our favorite little town Sutter Creek? And then, since we're doing that, might as well throw in a drive down beautiful Highway 4! Since the portion of the road we'll be covering is closed after the first big snow we had to do it! The day was plotted on a map in my head with some verification on google maps. The map said our little trip was going to take 5 hours and 10 minutes and cover 225 miles.