Six people are dead, two were injured and two are missing after a freak windstorm and waves as high as eight feet capsized their 27-foot boat on the California side of Lake Tahoe Saturday.
A dive team for the local sheriff’s department was continuing to search for the missing Sunday.
A local captain captured in two videos the sudden storm on the 191-square-mile body of water, considered the largest alpine lake in North America.
As conditions worsened, water blurred the camera lens.
The large swell apparently capsized the Chris Craft around 3 pm near DL Bliss State Park, according to the Coast Guard.
The Sacramento Bee reported that conditions on the lake were created by 30-knot winds and a temperature plummeted from 52 degrees to 38 in a matter of minutes.
The El Dorado County Sheriff’s Office reported they responded to the tragedy after reports that ten individuals were in the water battling wave big waves.
Authorities responded to the scene and pulled two of the victims onto nearby rocks to perform CPR, local news outlet South Tahoe Now reported. A lifeguard assisted in pulling a third person from the water and onto a Coast Guard boat, but the victim was later pronounced dead.
Witnesses saw helicopters circling the beach as late as 9 pm Saturday searching for those lost in the lake.
Joby Cefalu, the local boat captain who took the videos and who has traversed the 22-mile-long lake for decades, told South Tahoe Now that he’d never seen conditions as bad as they were Sunday.
“It was a very, very tragic day on Lake Tahoe,” he said.
The sheriff’s department is withholding the identities of the deceased until notifications to the next-of-kin have been made.
