Jeff Pelline's Sierra Foothills Report

Highway 20 is closed again this morning from five miles east of Nevada City to the junction of I-80, due to downed trees, according to CalTrans.

I-80 had been closed from Applegate (Placer County) to the Nevada state line due to multiple spinouts, according to the agency’s website. Later the interstate was opened to cars but not trucks for eastbound travel but closed to westbound travel for all vehicles.

Conditions are expected to change throughout the day. Updates are here.

Both roads were closed in the middle of the night.

On the upside, Tahoe ski resorts have received more than 70 inches of new snow. Several of them already are open and some, such as Alpine Meadows, are moving up their opening dates to Friday.

The rain in Grass Valley is expected to turn to snow showers later today, with winds gusting as high as 22 miles per hour. Less than half an inch of snow is possible.

The Sierra is experiencing snow showers and blowing snow. Daytime accumulations of up to a foot is possible at Lake Tahoe.

“Citizen journalist” Steve Frisch forwarded this photo of his driveway in Truckee this morning after he’d shoveled it. Well done. We hope to make it to Truckee/Tahoe tomorrow morning for Thanksgiving. In fact, the sun is supposed to come out tomorrow.

Power outages are continuing. (We lost power briefly this morning in Nevada City while I was writing this, but it was restored). The latest from PG&E is here:

Grass Valley:
7 outage(s) affecting 50 to 499 customer(s)
Cause: Unknown
Status: Awaiting assessment
Start Time of Outage: 11/23/2010 01:33:00 AM
Est. Time of Restoration: Not Available

Nevada City:
7 outage(s) affecting 50 to 499 customer(s)
Cause: Unknown
Status: Awaiting assessment
Start Time of Outage: 11/22/2010 07:58:00 AM
Est. Time of Restoration: Not Available

Alta Sierra:
1 outage(s) affecting 1 to 49 customer(s)
Cause: Trees falling on the power line
Status: Awaiting assessment
Start Time of Outage: 11/20/2010 10:43:00 PM
Est. Time of Restoration: 11/24/2010 12:00:00 PM

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The local media (including the Sierra Sun) is still sound asleep, but KSL Capital Partners, LLC said this morning it is is acquiring Squaw Valley USA ski operations, the Village at Squaw Valley and related real estate holdings.

The deal, which had been speculated around town by my sources, is expected to close by year-end. It marks the second sale of a North Tahoe ski resort this fall — also to a Colorado firm. Northstar-At-Tahoe was sold to Vail Resorts last month.

Squaw Valley USA offers 4,000 acres and 2,850 vertical feet of skiing and riding spanning six peaks of the Sierra Nevada. It was founded in 1949 by Alexander Cushing and successfully hosted the 1960 Olympic Winter Games.

“Squaw Valley and the Cushing family have been synonymous for more than 60 years,” said Nancy W. Cushing, Squaw Valley USA Chairman of the Board, in a statement. “Alex’s dream was to create a world-class, four-season destination resort in one of the most beautiful places in the world. This transaction will result in the culmination of that dream by providing the necessary resources to ensure Squaw Valley’s continued improvement and success for generations to come.”

KSL is a private equity firm based in Denver dedicated to investments in travel and leisure businesses.

KSL’s current and prior investments include some of the premier properties in travel and leisure, including Grand Wailea Resort Hotel & Spa, Arizona Biltmore Resort & Spa, La Costa Resort and Spa, Doral Golf Resort & Spa, Hotel del Coronado, the Claremont Hotel Club & Spa, the San Francisco Bay Club and its sister clubs, as well as ClubCorp, the world’s largest owner of private golf and business clubs.

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“After fighting for several months on the highest level of American politics, the leaders of many local tea-party activist groups now plan to take their agendas of limited government and penny pinching to their hometown governments,” the Wall Street Journal is reporting.

The Tea Party is calling this “a ground level attack.”

A a result, many recession-weary local officials are gearing up for a potential clash with tea partiers, saying they already squeezed all they can out of their budgets.

“Good luck! If they can find the fat, I want to know where it is,” Craig Dowling, the superintendent of the Harris County School District, who said he had a visit from local tea-party activists in late October, told The Journal. “We are driving school buses that are 20 years old. I wonder how many of them are driving 20-year-old cars.”

Could it happen here? You bet. In fact, it already is. One example: Last fall’s dustup between tea party supporters and the Rood Center over unfunded pension liabilities.

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Midterm election polls that excluded cellphones, such as Rasmussan, were biased toward Republicans, according to a new study by the Pew Research Center.

Landline-only interviews favored Republicans by more than 5 points.

Surveys that included cellphone users include NBC/Wall Street Journal, Pew Research Center, ABC/Washington Post and CBS/New York Times, as RawStory.com pointed out. Surveys that featured only landline users included Rasmussen, CNN/Opinion Research and Fox/Opinion Dynamics.

The article is here.

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If you want to know why newspapers are dying, watch this video about a San Francisco ice cream store that has used free online marketing to target customers. It has more followers on Twitter than the San Francisco Chronicle:

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