Is California's snow heavier than Utah/Colorado? Sure. Is it the mashed potatoes everyone seems to think it is all the time? Hell no.
It tends to stick better and hold longer than that dust out in the Rockies. Tahoe gets much larger dumps on average, too... So you'll see a 12"+ powder dump far more often than at least Colorado. Out there, you tend to have this situation where you get powder because the clouds just turn into snow and fall overnight, and leave you with 6-8" of new stuff quite often, but they'll get a really huge dump only once in a while, whereas in California, every time it snows its because of a Dump.
Utah's a bit more like California in the way it dumps, but still gets light snow.. but at the same time, then you have to live in Utah. lol.
As for South Tahoe...
You have Heavenly, Sierra, and Kirkwood. Heavenly's almost always crowded because it's right there in town and heavily marketed. It gets alright snow, but not as much as just about any other resort in Tahoe, and sometimes, I swear.. only half as much as Kirkwood. It has insane views and bomb tree skiing, but the top lifts also tend to be closed during the sickest storms because of wind, and the cables freeze up. For some reason, this doesn't seem to happen at a lot of other ski areas in Tahoe... I've hit Kirkwood where 50 mile an hour winds and snow were blowing over the ridge without issue.
Sierra's kinda a secret stash of a place now, and even though its not as close as Heav or as big and steep as Kirk, it's still got just about everything to offer, and has always had a pretty legit park for when theres no new snow. It also has expanded its gated area sidecountry access a lot over the last few years and has opened up a lot more sick terrain to explore... Most of which I haven't even had a chance to check out.
Kirkwood is just madness. Arguably the best snow in Tahoe due to its elevation, and some of the steepest and gnarliest lines. The only issue is that it can take half an hour or more to get there if its really dumping out, and is surrounded on 2 sides with high elevation highway passes that are closed on the reg. in such situations. It's an amazing mountain, but yeah kinda annoying to deal with if you're not able to get in ahead of the road closures.
