Tuesday July 30, 2024
UC Davis —
The clarity of Lake Tahoe’s famed blue waters in 2023 continued its years-long trend of improving during the winter and deteriorating during the summer. The annual clarity report, released today by the University of California, Davis – Tahoe Environmental Research Center, found that winter lake conditions were the clearest observed since 1983 and the 10th best on record, with visibility of 91.8 feet under the surface, compared with 72.2 feet in 2022.
Summer months tell a different story, marking the fifth murkiest on record with an average of 53.5 feet, compared with 68.9 feet in 2022. Overall, the annual average for lake clarity dropped to 68.2 feet from its 2022 value of 71.9 feet.
“It’s important to understand the short-term changes but even more important to be thinking about how this lies in the context of the longer-term trends,” said Alexander Forrest, interim director of the UC Davis Tahoe Environmental Research Center.