What it was like when there was 12 feet of snow in Town! (1992)

First of all you had better hope that you lived in town and not somewhere really interesting because you aren't going to be driving through 12 feet of snow. There were many people whose stories were pretty sad if they didn't have snow shoes because driving through this snow wasn't happening if it wasn't plowed by someone.

and if you left it to 12 feet before you did anything usually it was too late to do anything at all.

So, the people who did the best tended to have snow blowers the size of lawn mowers or rototillers. 

They tended to fare the best as long as they had snow blowed their roads every day when the snows started.

For example, at 4000 feet out past McCloud off of Highway 89 my friend was still alive then (he passed away January 2025. But, he was well over 80 years old and living alone remotely with his dog and cat on 2 1/2 acres of land. Well in 2024 it snowed 12 feet of snow on his land. So, he just snow blowed his land every day it snowed so he could drive in and out of there to the main road. This way even though he couldn't see out his main lower floor windows at all until May or June of 2024 he still could drive out and get food and whatever else he needed to survive.

However, in 1992 it wasn't just over 4000 feet 12 feet deep out past McCloud on highway 89 it was all of Mt. Shasta and Dunsmuir too having too much snow then to deal with. and likely Weed too even though I didn't go there that trip to Mt. Shasta.

So, people were trying to hoist up their snow blowers on top of their roofs to snow blow their roofs but older people especially kept falling off their roofs doing this into snow drifts so luckily no one died falling into a snow drift. However, I think some people died from heart attacks dealing with the snow though.

I had moved away from Mt. Shasta for the last time to the SF Bay area around Summer of 1992 so we came up to visit friends while they had 12 feet of snow here in the little town of Mt. Shasta. So, the biggest problem we encountered was that unless we went out with snow shovels to personally dig out a parking place on the street there there was no place to park our vehicle at all.

People who couldn't get their cars out at all were basically crying if they had to get to work for a week or more because there often was no way to do this then.

People were snow shoeing out and getting hotel rooms and riding buses who never rode buses before here in Mt. Shasta too to get to work wherever they worked in the area too.

However, it's also quite likely that 1992 was also when there was 40 feet of snow up at Bunny Flat at 6900 feet elevation when I skied down with a friend and fell into a tree circle where it stays melted away from trees about 3 feet around larger pine and fir trees especially at altitude and needed help with my friend I was skiing with to be able to get out of there alive in one piece.