Four people drowned at Lake Lanier during the Fourth of July weekend, including two Alpharetta men who jumped in the lake to push their rented pontoon boat off a sandbar during a late-night rainstorm.

State officials couldn't say Sunday if the number is a record for a single weekend at the popular lake north of Atlanta, but they noted that Lanier saw eight drownings in all of 2007 and seven in 2006.

The Lanier deaths brought to five the number of drownings around the state, including one at a farm pond in Effingham County in South Georgia, said Jennifer Barnes, a Georgia Department of Natural Resources spokeswoman.

The agency also reported 25 cases of boaters caught operating under the influence and 14 boating accidents during the holiday weekend.

Forsyth County Fire Department divers found the two victims of the Lanier pontoon boat mishap about 10 a.m. Sunday after a 90-minute search using sonar, said Capt. Jason Shivers, a department spokesman.

Their bodies were in the same area where they disappeared about 11 p.m. Saturday near dock No. 5 at the Port Royale Marina off Browns Bridge Road. Conditions forced authorities to call off an initial search earlier Sunday.

The victims were Lung Mang, 21, and Tha Thang, 23, Barnes said. Their bodies were turned over to the Forsyth County Coroner's Office, Shivers said.

The two men were on the boat with seven other people Saturday night when it got stuck on a sandbar as it entered the marina. Heavy rain and wind may have made the vessel difficult to maneuver, Shivers said.

DNR officials said the boat might have hit a concrete anchor before reaching the sandbar.

The victims disappeared as they and another passenger worked to free the boat, authorities said. The third passenger was uninjured and was identified as Van Mang, the 18-year-old brother of one of the drowning victims,

On Friday, 17-year-old Aeriel Cotuc Chaudjay of Duluth drowned off Lanier Beach South. The teen apparently waded from shallow water into an area with a 15-foot drop-off.

The Guatemala immigrant didn't know how to swim, family and friends told authorities. His friends were unaware that he was in trouble until he failed to surface.

Hall County authorities also reported the weekend drowning of a 14-year-old boy from East Meadow, N.Y. Like Chaudjay, the youth had been wading in shallow water and fell off into deep water and was unable to swim, Barnes said. He had been fishing and swimming earlier with family and friends.

"The terrain in the lake is so unpredictable with the low [water] levels," she said. "People are in shallow areas but they don't realize that at any point it can drop off. I guess that's what happened with the two teens."

The water level at Lake Lanier is lower this year than during any July 4th weekend since it was built in the 1950s.

With stumps and sandbars lurking just below the lake's surface, the federal agency that operates the lake issued last week had issued a warning to holiday revelers to beware.

Lanier is nearly 15 feet below full, at an elevation of 1,056.2 feet above sea level. The current record low for July 4 was set during another bad drought in 1988, at 1,061.2 feet above sea level or 5 feet higher than it will be this year.