8th body found from fatal Tahoe boat flip during rare June storm surge Saturday
At noon Saturday, the wind blew at just 7 mph, with gusts of 11 mph, at one buoy near the center of Lake Tahoe. By 3 p.m., the wind speed reached 29 and gusts hit 45, according to National Weather Service data.
It was at approximately that time that the day after the summer solstice on North America’s largest alpine lake turned deadly, as a 27-foot Chris-Craft boat capsized near Rubicon Point, leaving eight people dead, authorities said.
The El Dorado County Sheriff’s Office said Monday afternoon that divers near D.L. Bliss State Park found at about 2:40 p.m. the second of two people who went missing after the vessel flipped. Earlier Monday, deputies said divers from El Dorado and San Joaquin counties, as well as Washoe County in Nevada, had continued the search, even after a U.S. Coast Guard commander announced Sunday it was suspending its search.
On Tuesday morning, the Sheriff’s Office identified the eight people who died as Paula Bozinovich, 71, and Terry Pickles, 73, both of Redwood City; Joshua Antony Pickles, 37, of San Francisco; Peter Bayes, 72, of Lincoln; Timothy O’Leary, 71, of Auburn; Theresa Giullari, 66, and James Guck, 69, both of Honeoye, New York; and Stephen Lindsay, 63, of Springwater, New York.
A seasonal lifeguard and a ranger working for California State Parks were the first to respond to the emergency call about the 27-foot boat shortly before 3 p.m. Saturday, agency spokesperson Adeline Yee said in a statement Monday. The pair “began pulling individuals out of the water,” Yee wrote, and six people were pronounced dead at the time.
A seventh fatality was found and confirmed dead Sunday evening by deputies. Two more people were hospitalized Saturday.
Other circumstances surrounding the overturned boat, including whether the people on board were wearing life jackets, remain unclear.
Meteorologists said that thunderstorms coincided with a cold front to produce Saturday’s suddenly harsh conditions on the water — not extreme by Tahoe’s standards, but unusual for late June.
“Like a lot of disasters, this was sort of a confluence of events,” said Jan Null, a former National Weather Service meteorologist who runs Half Moon Bay-based Golden Gate Weather Services and followed the storm. “You have wintertime storms where you’re going to have gusts to 60 plus, but people aren’t out boating then.”
The National Weather Service office in Reno, Nevada, which tracks the Tahoe area, released Saturday morning a wind advisory for much of that day, covering the southern part of Lyon County and two Nevada counties east of the lake.
But the squall on the water was separate, less substantial in terms of both space and duration — and trickier to foresee.
At 2:34 p.m. Saturday, as the temperature dropped and winds accelerated on the lake, the National Weather Service released a regular “recreation forecast”.
The storm moved in from north to south, causing it to whip up the wind over the length of Lake Tahoe and likely increasing water swells, said Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the University of California’s Agriculture and Natural Resources office.
“Thunderstorms inherently mean that you can receive winds that are locally, at least on a very localized basis, significantly stronger and gustier than the general prevailing winds on that day,” Swain said.
“That message clearly did not reach the right people,” he added, calling the capsized boat “a tragic example of how unusual weather that people perceive to be out of nowhere, even though it was actually in the forecast for the day, can nonetheless kill people.”
The El Dorado County Sheriff’s Office have not released the names of the people who died in the incident, saying in its Monday news release that their identities would not be made public “until proper notifications have been made.” The Sheriff’s Office had not responded to repeated requests for information from The Sacramento Bee.
South of the capsized boat, other vessels that had flipped or were damaged in the storm caused “minimal impacts to the environment,” according to Eric Laughlin, a spokesperson for the state Office of Spill Prevention and Response in the California Department of Fish and Wildlife. South Lake Tahoe Fire Rescue contained spilled fuel, and only a thin rainbow sheen remained visible for a time, Laughlin said.
Several boats washed up Saturday on Conolley Beach in South Lake Tahoe, city spokesperson Sheree Juarez said, adding that they have since been removed.
Yee, the State Parks spokesperson, said the department, the Sheriff’s Office and the U.S. Coast Guard were investigating possible damage to boats besides the capsized Chris-Craft.
Of the two survivors from that boat, one swam to the shore and the other was rescued by the State Parks lifeguard, Yee wrote in the statement.
“This was an incredibly rare weather event and not a typical summer thunderstorm seen in Lake Tahoe,” she added.
This story was originally published June 23, 2025 at 5:13 PM with the headline "8th body found from fatal Tahoe boat flip during rare June storm surge Saturday."
CORRECTION: A previous version of this story incorrectly attributed oil spill cleanup to the capsized boat at D.L. Bliss State Park. The hazmat response occurred elsewhere near South Lake Tahoe.
