‘Beautiful but terrible’: historic mountain towns buckle under weight of California snow

Heavy snow has wrought calamity across the state; burying roads and houses, disrupting power and snapping branches off trees

Blake Heauser's chainsaw slowly rumbled quiet. Sounds of tall trees splintering and crashing under the weight of the freshly fallen snow cut through the stillness, as the latest round of winter weather bore down on the town, tucked into the foothills in northern California. He had cleared a path through the wooded debris for now but with more storms in the forecast it might not last.

Heauser had spent days trying to remove fallen trees from the roads that snaked through the hillsides in his community in Grass Valley, even as those roads disappeared under the heavy snow. He and others worked around the clock to ensure vulnerable neighbors could either evacuate or were able to safely remain in their buried homes, while grappling with the effects of prolonged and widespread power outages that left some without heat or pumped well water.