Carson City takes a warm plunge in Tahoe for the Special Olympics

Carson City’s Ted Rupert has been diving into Lake Tahoe’s frigid waters for nearly a decade as part of the annual fundraiser for the Special Olympics.

But this year’s Polar Plunge, he said, wasn’t so polar.

“This year was the first warm year,” he said of Saturday’s event. “The water was at a steamy 40 degrees.”

The annual plunge in Lake Tahoe’s Zephyr Cove now attracts hundreds of participants, raising about $100,000 for Special Olympics in the region.

That’s a big change from the dozen plungers Rupert dived with in 2004.

“There’s tons of people,” the general manager of Rupert’s Auto Body said. “I’m a small fish in a big pond now.”