Dangerous blizzard continues to pound California leaving tens of thousands without power as over three feet of snow falls in Sierra Nevada and wind gusts reach more than 100mph

• The powerful storm has dumped more than three feet of snow across the Sierra Nevada, with wind gusts over 100 mph 
• The region’s main east-west roadway I-80 has been shut down in both directions
• More than 30,000 California homes and businesses are left without power 

A dangerous blizzard continues to pound California, leaving tens of thousands of homes without power and forcing a long stretch of Interstate 80 to shut down.

The powerful storm has dumped more than three feet of snow across the Sierra Nevada range, with wind gusts over 100 mph in the Mountain West.

A half-million people are under blizzard warnings, with another six million under winter weather alerts, as an additional one to two feet of snow is expected in higher elevations.

National Weather Service meteorologist William Churchill warned that the massive blizzard is creating a ‘life-threatening concern’ for residents near Lake Tahoe.

Churchill said snow totals by late Sunday would range from 5 to 12 feet, with the most extreme conditions unfolding at elevations above 5,000 feet. Lower elevations will be inundated with heavy rain.

I-80, the region’s major east-to-west roadway, has been shut down in both directions since Friday night with numerous cars and trailers being left stranded on the road. 

The California Highway Patrol’s Truckee office said in social media posts: ‘It took several hours for emergency personnel and tow trucks to reach motorists’. 

There has been no estimate when the freeway would reopen, as the office suggests people to stay home in a series of posts. 

 ‘Stay warm and don’t put yourself and your family in a dangerous situation,’ one of the post reads. 

Kyle Frankland, a veteran snowplow driver, said several parts of his rig broke as he cleared wet snow underneath piles of powder. 

‘I´ve been in Truckee 44 years. This is a pretty good storm. It´s not record-breaking by any means, but it´s a good storm,’ he said. 

Dubravka Tomasin, a resident of Truckee for more than decade added: ‘It´s a blizzard. It’s pretty harrowing.’ 

The extreme blizzard could further extend into Utah and portions of western Colorado, according to Churchill, but he didn’t expect records to be broken.

‘It´s certainly just about as bad as it gets in terms of the snow totals and the winds. It doesn´t get much worse than that,’ he said. 

Earlier, the weather service warned that blowing snow was creating ‘extremely dangerous to impossible’ driving conditions and extreme avalanche danger in backcountry areas through Sunday evening. 

According to the South Lake Tahoe Government, the city’s Public Works staff have already completed an anti-icing treatment of all of streets in anticipation of the coming storm. 

East of the Sierra, authorities cited ‘multiple spin outs and collisions’ and ‘whiteout conditions,’ as it closed 90 miles of US 395 from near Bishop in the Owens Valley to Bridgeport, north of Mono Lake. 

As of Saturday afternoon, more than 30,000 homes and businesses are left without power in California and some 7,000 customers are without power in Idaho. 

In southern Nevada, where the weather service issued a warning Saturday for high winds gusting to 70 mph, NV Energy reported more than 27,000 customers without power in and around Las Vegas. 

The number has grown to 33,000 in hours, according to the tracking website PowerOutage.us. 

A tornado Friday afternoon in Madera County, California, caused some damage to an elementary school, said Andy Bollenbacher, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Hanford.

Some ski resorts shut down Friday and were digging out Saturday with an eye toward reopening Sunday.

‘We, along with most other resorts, will be closed today so our lift operations team can focus on clearing the roads,’ Shelby Dunlap, communications manager at the ski resort Sierra-at-Tahoe, told CNN. 

Palisades Tahoe, the largest resort on the north end of Tahoe and site of the 1960 Winter Olympics, closed all chairlifts Saturday due to snow, wind and low visibility.

Other areas closed Saturday included Sugar Bowl, Boreal and Sierra. Heavenly Mountain Resort planned to open late with limited operations.

The storm began barreling into the region Thursday. A blizzard warning through Sunday morning covers a 300-mile stretch of the mountains.

Some ski lovers raced up to the mountains ahead of the storm.

Daniel Lavely, an avid skier who works at a Reno-area home/construction supply store, was not one of them. 

He said Friday that he wouldn´t have considered making the hour-drive to ski on his season pass at a Tahoe resort because of the gale-force winds.

But most of his customers Friday seemed to think the storm wouldn´t be as bad as predicted, he said.

‘I had one person ask me for a shovel,’ Lavely said. ‘Nobody asked me about a snowblower, which we sold out the last storm about two weeks ago.’

 Meteorologists predicted as much as 10 feet of snow was possible in the mountains around Lake Tahoe by the weekend, with 3 to 6 feet in the communities on the lake´s shores.