Storm the event of the decade

RENO - Fifty-three years ago this week, the luxury passenger train City of San Francisco lay mired in tons of snow in the Sierra, stalled for three days by huge wind-blasted drifts.

A similar event played out this week when a chartered "Fun Train" running between Emeryville, Calif., and Reno fell victim to another series of Sierra storms that produced a similar amount of snow a half century later. This time, however, train travelers were marooned for only about six hours.

The U.S. Forest Service's Central Sierra Snow Lab just west of Donner Summit recorded 12.9 feet of snow in the storms that began Dec. 28 and finally tapered off Tuesday.

The 1952 train-stopper dropped 12.8 feet from Jan. 10 to Jan. 17, according to Lake Tahoe weather historian Mark McLaughlin.

While neither was a record, he said the winter of 1951-52 went on to dump 65 feet of snow on Donner Summit and produce a record 26-foot snowpack once the snow compacted.

David Wakeman, 68, who grew up in South Lake Tahoe, remembers that white winter well.

"There was enough snow that you walked in and out of your upstairs window," he said. "Mom made us dig light wells down to the windows to get sunlight in."

Pat Amundson, 78, organizes a "Survivors of the Winter of 1951-52" party each August. She said snow covered all the windows, with just a 3-inch gap between the top of the snow pile and the eaves of the roof.

While the snow lab lists two higher storm totals - 13.7 feet in Jan. 20-31, 1969, and 15.5 feet in March 27-April 8, 1982. McLaughlin said those were easily surpassed at other California locations.

Mount Shasta received 15.75 feet in a single storm Feb. 13-19, 1959 and Sugar Bowl Ski Resort near Donner Pass picked up 14 feet Feb. 6-9, 1999.

The California snowfall champion is Tamarack, 55 miles south of Donner Summit, where 32.5 feet fell in one month, January 1911, and 73.7 feet in one season, 1906-07.

"That was a relatively new station (it was established in 1905) but we accept the data," McLaughlin said.

The significance of the 1952 storm was that it held the westbound City of San Francisco and its 226 passengers and crew hostage for three days starting Jan. 13.

McLaughlin, whose Web site www.thestormking.com is a reference library in Sierra storm lore and records, shared his research in an August 2000 special on the History Channel, "Snowbound: The Curse of the Sierra."

"In other parts of the country, you say Mother Nature or Old Man Winter. Here in the Sierra, we call him the Storm King," he said at the time. "Once that railroad was put in, it became an annual battle every winter fighting that Storm King."

In an effort to outwit the monarch, wooden tunnels were built to shelter trains from avalanches and giant plows with propellerlike attachments were used to keep the tracks clear over the 7,239-foot summit.

But in 1952, the Storm King triumphed and the California-bound train was enveloped in what McLaughlin calls "Sierra cement" at Yuba Gap, 20 miles west of Donner Summit.

The diesel fuel was exhausted after 36 hours and by Jan. 16, food and tempers had run short before skies cleared and the stranded train passengers were rescued.

"There were quite a few servicemen on board that were heading for Oakland to be shipped out for the Korean war," McLaughlin said. "They didn't mind spending three days snowbound in the Sierra, talking with some young ladies and missing the ship date."