"This is another one that just went boom," he says, pointing to the remnants of a house that looks like it exploded but was actually brought down by the sheer weight of the snow.In his own home, he has dug a path to allow him to open his back door but inside it is dark 24 hours a day because the snow is so tightly packed against the windows."People here have been living in darkness for months," he says,"it's like being squeezed by an anaconda.
It is a slow motion disaster and it's not just the people of Mammoth who are living in fear. The expectation is that once this snow starts to melt, it will send torrents of water gushing downstream.Houses have been covered in unprecedented snowfall, but the coming melt could devastate the area tooIn California's central valley, the snow-capped mountains, far in the distance, are a spectre of doom.
Tulare Lake was drained by farmers before completely disappearing by the mid-part of last century. But it is reappearing with a vengeance, already covering 30 square miles, an area roughly the size of Coventry, it looks like a vast inland sea. Experts predict that over the next couple of months it could grow to 200 square miles.
At the lake's shoreline, helicopters fly in sandbags and the army, in tractors, are helping shore up the levee to try to protect the city of Corcoran. This area has now been declared a disaster zone.