A levee break flooded hundreds of homes Saturday as the storm that has pummeled the West Coast with high wind and heavy rain dropped a thick blanket of snow on the Sierra Nevada on Saturday. Thousands of people had no power in three states and thousands more had been told to leave their homes in mudslide-prone areas of Southern California.

Up to 44 inches of snow had fallen in some parts of the Sierra Nevada and forecasters expected the storm to dump as much as 10 feet at higher elevations of the mountain range by Sunday.

East of the Sierra in Nevada’s Lyon County, a levee broke early Saturday along an agricultural canal, releasing water as much as 3 feet deep into the town of Fernley and stranding about 3,500 people, authorities said. Rescuers were using school buses, boats and helicopters. [MORE]