FERNLEY, Nev. — Hundreds of homes sat in up to 8 feet of water Sunday after a canal rupture as freezing weather spread sheets of ice over yards and streets, hindering efforts to get the water to drain.
As many as 400 homes were damaged when the canal’s bank gave way after heavy rainfall produced by a West Coast storm system that had piled snow up to 11 feet deep in the Sierra Nevada.
Thousands of customers had been blacked out in three states, and many of them in California could remain in the dark for days because the storm ripped down nearly 500 miles of power lines, utility officials said Sunday.
At least three deaths were blamed on the storm.
The irrigation-canal failure at Fernley released a wave of frigid water into the town early Saturday.
The canal was temporarily repaired by late in the day, but as much as a square mile of the town was still under water at least 2 feet deep Sunday as ice impeded drainage.
Lyon County Fire Division Chief Scott Huntley estimated 1,500 people had been displaced. No injuries were reported in the town of 20,000 people about 30 miles east of Reno.
In the rugged Sierra Nevada range, the Kirkwood ski resort near Lake Tahoe reported about 11 feet of snow had fallen since the storm system moved inland from the Pacific last week.
Parts of northern California will get a reprieve from the rain and snow today, but in the mountains, “there’s a chance of snow and snow showers all the way through Thursday,” said National Weather Service meteorologist Angus Barkhuff.
More than 234,000 homes and businesses in northern California were still without power Sunday.
