LOS ANGELES (Reuters) -At least seven people were killed and one remains missing from a pleasure boat that capsized over the weekend in a sudden squall that churned Lake Tahoe in California with high winds and tall swells, authorities said on Monday.
The 27-foot-long Chris-Craft outboard motor vessel with 10 people aboard overturned near the shores of D.L. Bliss State Park during the unexpected micro-burst storm that swept the deepwater alpine lake, according to the U.S. Coast Guard.
Two of the boaters survived the accident, but seven others died, including one whose body was found on Sunday, and one was still missing as of Monday, the El Dorado County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement posted online. It said the victims’ identities were being kept private pending notification of next of kin.
Weather on the lake was relatively clear before the squall abruptly struck the area, spawning 30-knot winds and eight-foot swells and plunging air temperatures by 30 degrees Fahrenheit in a matter of minutes, a Coast Guard spokesperson, Chief Petty Officer Lauren Steenson, told Reuters.
The Coast Guard called off its search for additional survivors on Sunday after plying the waters of the lake for more than 12 hours.
The vessel capsized in the vicinity of Bliss State Park off the southwestern shore of Lake Tahoe, the sixth-largest body of freshwater in the United States by volume after the five Great Lakes in the Midwest, and the second-deepest after Crater Lake in Oregon.
A major outdoor tourist destination straddling the border of California and Nevada in the Sierra Nevada mountain range, Tahoe also ranks as the largest alpine lake in North America.
(Reporting by Steve Gorman in Los Angeles; Editing by Michael Perry)
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