Tsunami research is ongoing at Lake Tahoe

Illustration of a tsunami striking the shores of Lake Tahoe. Illustration by Jonah M. Kessel / Tahoe Daily Tribune

Last year was a wild ride with so many unexpected twists and turns that even the idea of ​​a tsunami in Lake Tahoe might not seem pointless.

Several thousand years ago according to Dr. Richard Schwickert, a retired professor of geology at the University of Nevada, Reno who spent most of his career working in the Sierra Nevada, Tahoe was exposed to a tsunami.

Whether he is mapping or studying faults around the aquarium, Schwickert and colleagues are devoted to researching the aquarium.

Schwikert has been collecting evidence for over 15 years that helped synthesize tsunami theory.

In 1999, the idea of ​​one or more large tsunamis on Lake Tahoe was first born by Dr. Mary Lahren when she and Schwickert were mapping land near Eagle Rock near Homewood.

While the exact date is the most difficult to determine, it is estimated that a tsunami struck Lake Tahoe about 10,000 – 20,000 years ago after a massive earthquake shook the basin.

Over the years, more evidence has inspired researchers to delve deeper into what may have happened in the area, including many anomalies that had not previously been identified.

In 1998 Jim Gardner of the United States Geological Survey released a detailed map. USGS’s Jim Moore started collaborating with Schweickert in 2005.

The map showed the landslide that occurred in McKinney Bay along with several other indications all pointing to the tsunami theory.

While Schwikert and other researchers were already collecting data on the ground, Dr. Christopher Keats, Assistant Professor at Santa Clara University in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Director of the Robotics Systems Laboratory at SCU, brought his students and equipment to Lake Tahoe to get closer to see lying beneath the surface of the lake about 13 years ago. Years old.

“We are starting to realize that there is evidence underwater that could also be attributed to the tsunami,” Schwikert said.

In 2005, the team consisting of Dr. Winnie Cortimer of Western Nevada College, Kitts, Moore, Lahren and Schwickert conducted research in Tahoe City Shelf where they discovered previously unspecified “rocky hills” in a lake before.

Similar to the small ripples you see on the beach when you walk along the beach, huge ripples were formed due to the size and strength of the giant waves.

Some of the ripples that form “rocky ridges” are 6.5 feet high and stretching 6,562 feet on the northwest side of the lake.

These perfectly aligned rocky ridges are found in four different locations off the western shore, which added to the theory of “huge ripples” which means “huge waves”.

There is no other explanation for why these rocks line up so perfectly underwater, Schweikert says.

If you are on a boat on a relatively calm day, these rocky hills can be seen with the naked eye at a depth of about 15-30 feet.

Big sand waves can also be found in the 15 areas around the lake. They were caused by large amounts of water flowing into the lake from land, some reaching nearly 10 feet.

The research team spent 40-50 days together on the lake, using robots to get a deeper look and interpret the underwater features of the lake.

2014 photo in Emerald Bay with Dr. Kitts and Dr. Jim Moore. Students on the right post ROV Triton

Another indication is that beneath the surface, Lake Tahoe is huge vertical valleys, some up to 200 feet deep, that have been carved into the side wall as in the case of Rubicon Point.

“A large amount of water had to be dumped on the beaches, which flowed back into the side walls,” Schweikert said. “An extremely large amount of water was flowing down the sides of the lake.”

Some of these canyons extend into some of the deepest parts of the lake.

One such site is the Tahoe Keys in South Lake Tahoe, where the largest number of deep canyons are carved into the lake’s side wall.

“The landslide caused large waves that inundated the low-lying areas around the lake sides and produced these features,” he said. “Lake Tahoe is the only lake that we realize has features like this. Nowhere else in the world has it been documented.”

Not only did this earthquake shake the ground in Tahoe, it also caused nearly 3.5 cubic miles of surrounding land to slip dramatically to 1,640 feet into the lake.

When the block collided with the lake with such force, it caused a scattering that caused waves about 300 feet high. The massive height of these waves lowered the lake by 33 feet for a period of time.

The earthquake and subsequent tsunami changed the Tahoe Basin.

Lake sediments and glacial deposits washed into the lake, and the tremendous force of the waves flattened the countryside around the lake like the relatively “flat” area from Biju to Myers in South Lake Tahoe.

Secondary landslides wiped out life at the lake’s edge. The areas most affected by the lake from the massive waves were the Glenbrook, Zephyr Cove, and Stateline to Baldwin Beach areas in South Lake Tahoe.

The massive waves may have reached the top of the Trukie River valley before flowing back into the lake.

To understand the effect, Schwickert was looking for active faults around the pelvis.

While evidence of many faults has been around since the 1960s, Schweickert drew a flaw called the North Tahoe Fault that runs northeast of the lake through Incline Village and over Mount Rose and even Reno.

The West Tahoe Dollar Point Fault runs north to south along the West Shore, and a third fault, called Tahoe Sierra, runs through the mountains west of the lake.

He said, “Major earthquakes on the western coast could produce a series of potential hazards.”

“As of now, it doesn’t seem like something that should cause concern to those who live in the basin.” The risk of wildfires in the basin is much greater, Schwikert said.

With active faults and relatively “weak” sediments in some areas of the lake, he says there is a possibility of another tsunami in Lake Tahoe again.

He said, “There is no way to predict whether it will be 20 or 20 years from now.”

Other researchers have also worked on this theory. Although no work is currently being done by UC Davis Tahoe Environmental Research Center, they still highlight the historic tsunami in their arrival and at Lake Tahoe in depth.

An underwater landslide that caused a devastating tsunami was recreated by computer simulations in the TERC video, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_mzGm-g9LI.

Every year, Keats brings students to Lake Tahoe who want to use their equipment. Schwikert hopes to continue researching into the future with Keats and his team. As technology advances, he hopes the robotics team will be able to delve deep into the lake in the future.

“There are still a lot of places we haven’t gone,” he said.

Schweickert released an e-book last fall, Journeys Through the Nevada Wildlands, which takes readers on a tour of geological history and includes parts of the south and east sides of Lake Tahoe.

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