A severe winter storm dumped several inches of heavy, wet snow on Silverton Friday through Sunday morning, triggering travel restrictions on U.S. 550 and forcing Silverton Mountain Ski Area to delay its opening.
“In the last 18 hours the ski area received 28 inches of new snow in the parking lot and 36 to 48 inches of new snow at mid-mountain,” said Jen Ader Brill, co-owner of the ski area, reported Saturday afternoon. “This is the second largest 24-hour snow total in the history of Silverton Mountain.”
The ski area was finally able to open on Monday and will be open again this Saturday and Sunday.
The storm was also blamed for a semi accident on the north side of Molas Pass, at mile marker 67, where a load of cabinets plunged off the highway. The driver was not seriously injured.
The storm also knocked down several power lines in the area and resulted in brief outages on Saturday.
Meanwhile, the National Weather Service has warned of another winter storm on the way, with heavy snow expected Friday and snow showers continuing through the weekend.
Brill said the only larger storm to hit Silverton Mountain was during the record-setting winter of 2005, which dropped 117 inches in one long storm cycle.
Heavy snow continued in the San Juans through Sunday morning.
Brill said the mid-mountain base is now 60 inches deep, with 30 inches of base in the parking lot. 
“County road crew snow plows had a tough time navigating the road to the ski area with several vehicles getting stuck at 5 a.m. this morning,” Brill said Saturday.
“Due to the massive depth of new snow, the rope lines used to delineate open and closed ski runs have been buried. Even though the ski patrol arrived at Silverton Mountain at 5:45 a.m. this morning, the ski area had to stay closed today due to the massive amounts of snow.
 Silverton Mountain is open Saturdays and Sundays for the first three weeks of December.