"The calm changes to weather flaws that come tearing through the mountain canyons, slapping at the lake to create flurries and gusts of wind that arrive in an instant and go as quickly. One Laker told me she can be as treacherous a body of water as may be found in the entire world, the wind blowing from aall pints of the compass at the same time."

One "Jibenonasa" from Georgetown so advised the Placerville Recorder in the summer of 1866, after making his way to Tahoe by way of Blackwood Creek Canyon, sailing on the lake and leaving with a healthy respect for its variable moods.

Henry R. Miquels, early day California and Nevada newsman, reported a decade later: "Truly no man knows whence the wind comes or whither it goes. One moment there comes a puff from the south, the next there is a no less decided breeze from the east; in a twinkling there comes at catspaw from the nor'west, in the same second the water surface seems glown in two or three directions simultaneously." Miquels further discovered "whirlwinds no small boat could withstand, a snow squall that came from the north, described a horseshoe a flew off at a tangent, and the questionable case of a boatman who had been blown clean off a raft while trying to navigate with a setting pole near shore."

Tahoe can also be the quiet, calm dilettante resting without a ripple to disturb her stillness day after day. At such times the lake is dazzling in her brightness, the surface smooth and polished, and the clearly discernible curve of the earth stretches away across the placid deep blue in an endless arc. Generally the summer and fall months at Tahoe offer a cloudless, brilliant sky, quiet water and penetrating sunshine.

Thunderstorms strike infrequently, but when they do they are often preceded by terraced pyramids of white-topped clouds, their altitudinous bases black with the threat of rainwater, bringing a sombre hush that lies upon the mountains. Then a breeze fans out across the water, tracing serpentine patterns, followed by swirling gusts that burst with a sudden intensity, slashing at the flatness of the lake's surface and driving across the extent of Tahoe to leave in their wake a sawtooth of snow water froth that tumbles boiling breakers on the farther shore.

On Tahoe a combination of roiling water, dead calm and storm waves may occur at various points on the lake at one an the same time. Often a flat surface, intersprinkled with isolated circles of wind disturbance, is evident when not a breath of air may be felt. Crosswinds frequently come from three or four different directions at once, whipping the water into a turbulent white-crested cross-chop. It is also true that a marine traveler may experience wind in his face, while following the oval perimeter of the shoreline, without it once blowing at his back.

A serrated ridge of water on the horizon usually means that surging combers will erase the calm of the lake within minutes. If a boat from the western side of Tahoe is caught on the mid-eastern shore in an "up the lake blow" a logical course to follow is south along the shoreline to the far end, making the turn close in past Camp Richardson and the entrance to Emerald Bay, into the smooth water on the western, or lee side. Starting east across Tahoe under these south-west wind conditions may find the mariner leaving a dead calm at Tahoe City only to encounter three and four foot rollers in the center of the lake and even heavier water at Deadman's Point and Glenbrook.

The distance between crests of storm waves on Lake Tahoe has been estimated at more than 40 feet with 10 to 12 foot through following sustained, high-velocity winter blows.

Prevailing winds are out of the south and southwest, moving north up the lake, therefore, the western shore is considered the lee side and normally navigable by even the smallest of craft unless an east wind strikes. When this occurs, and a "Washoe Zephyr" funnels out of Nevada, the waters at Incline, Glenbrook, Zephyr Cove, Carnelian Bay, Tahoe City, Homewood, Meeks and Emerald Bay receive the full brunt of the northeaster. A north or east wind is the exception; however, a prudent boatman restricts his travel to the east side of the lake in the mornings, when the waters are usually calm, and keeps to the west and south sides after the afternoon winds strike the Nevada shoreline.

Tahoe's waters agitate so suddenly that lake residents in the 1870's thought gigantic subterranean geysers existed in the Great Deep. The reason for these flash turmoils of water is found in the fact that Tahoe lies cradled on the summit of the Sierra Nevada, vulnerable to winds that blast over the nine to nearly eleven thousand foot mountain ranges, sweep down the deep canyons and fan out across the water.

In 1873 the Sacramento Union aptly described the weather conditions encountered on the lake: "Smiling and lovely as she looks, Tahoe has fits of anger when even an old salt would prefer the wilds of the Atlantic to braving her freakish wrath."

Charles Goodwin, in his Comstock Club , placed these words in the twinkle of an Irishman's brogue when he spoke of the Big Blue:

"Her antural face is bluer than that of a stock sharp in a falling market, but when the wind comes a wooin' and she dons her foamy lace, powders her face with spray, and fastens upon her swellin' breast a thousand diamonds of sunlight, O but she is a winsome looking beauty to be sure!"

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