Three Australians have survived being buried alive in a deadly avalanche at a popular US ski resort that has been walloped by a wild storm.

One man was killed at California’s Palisades Tahoe, formerly known as Squaw Valley and the site of the 1960 Winter Olympics.

The area had been slammed by extreme winds of 160km/hr and huge dumps of snow the previous day, but was assessed as safe for skiing.

Only 30 minutes after the lift opened for the season on Thursday morning (AEDT), the snow on a slope gave way just as skiers were getting started.

The lift was deemed safe before it opened at 9am for the season. Photo: AAP

Australian siblings Hannah Sugerman and Oliver Thompson were on the slopes with Sugerman’s partner Callum when the trio was hit.

“I had no idea it was coming, I did not hear it at all, I could feel everything rolling around underneath me,” Sugerman told Nine.

“And it just felt heavy, so heavy, the snow weighed far more than I ever would have imagined.”

Sugerman was buried up to her neck and feared the worst had happened to her companions.

“My biggest fear was not knowing if there was more snow coming down behind me because I was literally like, neck deep.”

Sugerman and her partner found each other, but had to look for her brother who was hundreds of metres down the mountain with a dislocated knee and fractured tibia and fibula.

Thompson said the momentum had “boosted” him off the cliff and he thought “I’m probably going to die”.

“The first thing he said to me when we skied up to him on the side of the hill, he’s like, ‘I thought you were dead’. And I said, ‘I thought you were dead,” Sugerman said.

Thompson added: “I’m alive so I think that’s all that matters”.

Siblings Hannah Sugerman and Oliver Thompson feel lucky to be alive. Photo: 9NEWS

The avalanche debris field was about 45 metres wide, 140 metres long and three metres deep, the Placer County Sheriff’s office said.

Skiers used their hands to dig people out of the snow before rescue teams arrived to find survivors and stretcher them to medical care.

A man, named as 66-year-old Kenneth Kidd in media reports, died in the avalanche.

It was not immediately clear what triggered the avalanche, but heavy snows and high winds have pounded the mountainous area for the past day.

Michael Gross, vice president of mountain operations at Palisades Tahoe, told reporters the resort’s ski patrol had been carrying out avalanche assessments in the area where the slide took place and deemed it safe to open to the public.

It was normal to open a ski run amid heavy snows, he said.

-with AAP