I used to live there at Lake Tahoe, briefly at Incline Village and then for over a year at South Shore. I worked on the Taho Queen the sternwheeler and also as a snowcat mechanic for Heavenly.
I remember I had to board the cable car up to my shop and down every day, a couple of times the winds and snow were so heavy we had to ride down on specially built tracked equipment that looked like a snow groomer with the wide grousers but had several rows of seats in the bed instead, iot was a heck of a cool job, and the skiing was free!
12’ of snow is a LOT, its going to jam up the roads for a couple of days, at the least it will help raise the lake level. I wish I was there again but I moved to Alaska.
I could take a trip south to Whittier, they get 85’ of snow per year.
We have friends, who have sons and daughters with good degrees who got caught up into the snows you described, and they became and still are basically ski bums in their late 30’s to early 40’s.
They have a lot of snow stories like yours.