On Saturday morning, residents of South Jordan, Utah, about 20 miles south of Salt Lake City, woke up to an astonishing sight. Thousands of tumbleweeds had blown into town and piled up against people’s homes overnight.

Roads were blocked. Entire cars buried. In some cases, the tumbleweed jumbles reached the rooflines or upstairs balconies of people’s homes, said Rachael Van Cleave, the city’s public information officer.

“It was quite a sight to see,” she said. “They just rolled right into a lot of our neighborhoods, blocking homes, their front doors and their garages, 10 and maybe even up to 15 feet high.”

Winds of 70 to 80 miles per hour had blown across much of Utah for a few days, peaking on Saturday. Tumbleweeds also blew en masse into South Jordan’s neighbor city of Eagle Mountain, and across stretches of open land and highways in Nevada and western Utah.

Before South Jordan got its current name, the city was called Gale, “as in gale-force winds,” Ms. Van Cleave said.

This week’s wind was part of the same cold front and storm that dumped 10 feet of snow on parts of California. In Utah, the tumbleweeds were quickly followed by snow starting on Saturday evening.