Heavy snow hit Bend on Tuesday morning amid a blizzard warning issued by the National Weather Service for areas east of the Cascades above 3,000 feet. The weather warning is expected to stay in effect until 4 p.m. Wednesday, with even more snow forecast later in the week.

“It is panning out like we expected,” said Matt Callihan, a meteorologist from the National Weather Service station in Pendleton. “We will see conditions degrade into the evening with 6 inches (of snow) going into Wednesday morning.”

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Blizzard alert issued for Central Oregon, with snow in the forecast in Bend and beyond

Bend’s snow plows in action

Chuck Swan, of the city of Bend’s streets and operations department, said plows have been out since early Tuesday morning. The threshold to deploy plows in nonresidential areas of Bend is 2 inches, and Swan said there was enough accumulation to deploy in the higher elevation areas of Bend by 7 a.m.

Swan said he didn’t expect plows to be deployed to residential areas — at least not until higher priority roads are taken care of Wednesday morning.

“With this (storm) system, we probably will not plow residential roads. We need 6 inches with more snow in the forecast for residential roads,” Swan said. “But the weather in Bend, as you know, changes every two hours. In 2016 it was forecasted for 6 inches, but we got 18. Every storm is different, but we are prepared either way.”

Forecast through week

Callihan predicted a break in the weather from Wednesday afternoon through Thursday morning. But by Thursday evening elevations below 3,000 feet might see an inch of snow. Those areas will see 2 to 3 inches by Friday evening and an additional 2 to 4 inches Saturday.

Higher elevations are expected to see a lot more snow than areas between 4,000 and 3,000 feet. Callihan said each wave of the storm could add between 6 to 20 inches at higher elevations. As of Tuesday afternoon, Mt. Bachelor ski area had already seen an additional 15 inches of powder.

Extreme wind limits Mt. Bachelor operations

Mt. Bachelor opened Tuesday with limited operations, and many of its larger lifts will be shut down through Wednesday due to extreme winds and weather conditions. At 7 a.m., the ski area posted on its operations web page that winds were forecast to blow throughout the day, with gusts over 100 mph on the northwest side.

Later Tuesday morning, Mt. Bachelor updated its conditions page to warn guests to drive cautiously up the mountain. This safety advisory came after two were hospitalized in a crash along Century Drive involving a Toyota 4Runner and a Cascades East Transit bus headed down from Mt. Bachelor ski area on Saturday.

Closures, delays due to snow

CET bus schedules were running normally, but delays were expected to the Mt. Bachelor service due to heavy traffic and winter road conditions.

The blizzard conditions did have an impact on schools throughout the city. Central Oregon Community College announced Tuesday morning that remote and in-person classes were canceled due to extreme weather conditions. Another update is pending for Wednesday.

“The philosophy of Central Oregon Community College is that classes will be held except under extreme adverse conditions. We realize that there are times when road conditions on campus are acceptable, yet travel from some parts of the district may be inadvisable. We expect individual students to make whatever decisions are necessary for their own safety,” states the college’s inclement weather policy.

Oregon State University-Cascades issued a closure for 4 p.m., and Bend-La Pine schools operated normally throughout Tuesday.