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Disappearing Lakes, Ponds & Other Bodies Of Water

rynner2

Gone But Not Forgotten
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Oz Lake Dries Up
Profound Quote of the Week:
"There's a strong correlation between when the lake dries out and a really big drought," he says. "The link between Lake George drying out and the current drought is pretty poignant."
:confused: :wtf:
 
What makes it even less noteworthy is that it's Lake George. Sure, it may not have actually been empty that often, but during the drier part of the year, they graze sheep on parts of the lake. A strong breeze has been known to blow all the water down one end.

Essentially, Lake George is a large, shallow body of water, which (at a rough guess from personal observation) loses at least half of its volume if it doesn't rain for a month or so. So it is hardly surprising that it is currently dry. What is surprising, is that it doesn't dry out more often.
 
There may be an existing thread where this would fit, but none immediately came to mind.-lopaka


St. Louis-Area Lake Vanishes Over Days
By JIM SUHR

WILDWOOD, Mo. (AP) - To folks around Wildwood, it is nothing but freaky: an entire 23-acre lake vanished in a matter of days, as if someone pulled the plug on a bathtub.

Lake Chesterfield went down a sinkhole this week, leaving homeowners in this affluent St. Louis suburb wondering if their property values disappeared along with their lakeside views.

``It's real creepy,'' said Donna Ripp, who lives near what had been Lake Chesterfield. ``That lake was 23 acres - no small lake. And to wake up one morning, drive by and it's gone?''

What once was an oasis for waterfowl and sailboats was nothing but a muddy, crackled pit outlined by rotting fish.

The sight had 74-year-old George English scratching his head.

``It's disheartening, getting out on your deck and seeing this,'' he said as he stood next to wife, Betty, and the ``lakeside'' condominium they bought in 1996 for its view. ``One day it's a beautiful lake and now, bingo, it's gone.''

Some residents said they noticed that the lake, after being swelled by torrential rains weeks earlier, began falling last weekend. The Englishes said they noticed the drop-off Monday.

By Wednesday, the manmade lake - normally seven to 10 feet deep in spots - had been reduced to a mucky, stinky mess.

David Taylor, a geologist who inspected the lakebed Wednesday, told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that the sinkhole was formed when water eroded the limestone deep underground and created pockets in the rock. The sinkhole was ``like a ticking time bomb.''

The lake and surrounding housing development date to the late 1980s. The development now includes more than 670 condominiums and houses, about one-tenth of them bordering the lake.

Because the lake is private property, the subdivision's residents will have to cover the cost of fixing it, probably through special property assessments. George English expects it to cost $1,000 a household.

It is a price English said he is willing to pay. He just wants the unsightly pit gone, either by refilling it with water or dumping enormous amounts of dirt into it to create green space or usable land.

``I think it'll come back again,'' he said. ``You have to hope they can fix it.''


06/11/04 16:46

© Copyright The Associated Press.

http://cnn.netscape.cnn.com/news/story.jsp?flok=FF-APO-1110&idq=/ff/story/0001/20040
 
:sob: I'm very sorry for the fish and other wildlife.
 
i remember being scared shitless as a child/teen by stories claiming that cases like this one of large quantities of water going missing were due to aliens in flying saucers coming and stealing the water, because they had run out or something. i was worried that they would eventually take all the water. :laughing:
 
an entire 23-acre lake vanished

Stop that!


We had a lake that mostly drained down a sinkhole around here about three years ago. Only some of the deepest pockets remained. Yahoos would drive out on the lakebed. The ones in ATVs drove back off, a few dopes in cars got stuck.
Eventually, the lake started refilling. I'm not sure if the aquifer rose or the sinkhole plugged back up. And here I didn't think it wierd enough to contribute any clippings to FT at the time. :mad:
 
Sounds like Lake George, just outside the ACT.

It's extremely large, and flat, and has a tendency to evaporate in dry weather. And a stiff breeze has been known to blow it all up one end, leaving the other dry enough to graze sheep on.
 
MOSCOW, May 19 (Reuters) - A Russian village was left baffled on Thursday after its lake disappeared overnight.

NTV television showed pictures of a giant muddy hole bathed in summer sun, while fishermen from the village of Bolotnikovo looked on disconsolately.

"It is very dangerous. If a person had been in this disaster, he would have had almost no chance of survival. The trees flew downwards, under the ground," said Dmitry Zaitsev, a local Emergencies Ministry official interviewed by the channel.

Officials in Nizhegorodskaya region, on the Volga river east of Moscow, said water in the lake might have been sucked down into an underground water-course or cave system, but some villagers had more sinister explanations.

"I am thinking, well, America has finally got to us," said one old woman, as she sat on the ground outside her house.

From Reuters.
 
Something similar happened in Tallahassee, FL in 1999.

http://aquat1.ifas.ufl.edu/depguys.html
(lots of nice pics of the aftermath at the link...)
Outstanding Florida Water Body, Lake Jackson (Tallahassee), is known nationally as a premiere bass fishing lake. And over the years, aquatic weed and water quality concerns in the lake have been the subject of countless homeowners' meetings and of primary interest to lake management personnel. However, its bass reputation and aquatic weed problems became much less consequential on September 16, 1999 when a sink hole suddenly drained more than half the lake of every last gallon of water, not to mention every last fish and alligator. It is now possible to walk from shore to shore--but steer clear of the sink hole.

Jess Van Dyke, long-time regional biologist with the Bureau of Invasive Plant Management (Florida Department of Environmental Protection) was there when it happened. "It was spectacular: animals trying to scramble out; a whirlpool of gators, birds and bass went down the hole," said Van Dyke. Lake Jackson is one of Florida's disappearing lakes, lakes with sinkholes that are known to drain periodically. Lake Jackson, for example, has drained 4 times previously in the 20th century, in 1907, 1933, 1957, 1982 and now in 1999.

"Our records show that in 1982 the lake refilled from rainfall within about 6 months. In 1957 there was a drought, so it took much longer to refill. It's all about long term rainfall patterns," says Van Dyke. It is expected that the lake will eventually collect water and again become a top-notch fishing lake.

For more information, contact Jess Van Dyke, the regional biologist for the northwest Florida region (which includes Lake Jackson), at Bureau of Invasive Plant Management, 3900 Commonwealth Blvd, Tallahassee, FL 32399; (850) 245-2809.

Here are pics of ex-Lake Jackson in no particular order; pics include some taken on that fateful day in September 1999 (even though they're mis-dated as 2002), and some taken 3 years later, in September 2002. The pics below include some that feature some employees of the Tallahassee offices of the Bureau of Invasive Plant Management.
 
Fascinating stuff!

How come I've got this old without hearing about this sort of thing before? :shock:

(Especially as I'm fascinated by anything to do with water.)
 
Any records of anyone actually being sucked down a sinkhole? Just wondering...
 
Whistling Jack said:
It all comes out of a geyser at the other end?

Poor chap.

More detail here:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/4566355.stm

"It's very dangerous. If somebody is caught by such a calamity, the chances of survival are practically nil," fireman Dmitry Zaitsev said, pointing out that lakeside trees appeared to have been dragged down with the water.

The lake's disappearance may have been caused by subsidence allowing the water to drain into a cave system or underground river, local official Dmitry Klyuev said.

According to Mr Klyuev, several houses were swallowed up in similar circumstances 70 years ago.
 
Back in the days of mining in the Welsh valleys there were quite a lot of instances of streams and lakes disappearing as the water made it's way into the mines though faults in the rock and sink holes.
I found out when I was researching an article for the centre for fortean zoology's journal, Animals and Men, that this regularly happens in mining areas around the world.
 
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Village youngsters said the lake had appeared during the reign of the feared Tsar Ivan the Terrible and had been "shrouded in dark mystery" ever since.

"We used to go swimming there, but we were rather afraid of its depth, and there were various rumours. For instance people said there used to be a church there underwater," one girl told the TV.
That ties in with the American lakes that come and go.

Not unlikely that a church was built there during a dry period, and that the lake appeared during the reign of the feared Tsar Ivan the Terrible.
 
Saw this on it in the Independent, (Sat 21st May)

Strange case of the missing lake

Bolotnikovo, Russia
Villagers were baffled after the water in their lake disappeared overnight. "Even the trees flew downwrds under the ground," an official said in the town on the Volga. The water might have been sucked into an underground cave system, said an official, but one local blamed America.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

What it doesn't specify is whether it was the one 'official' or two different guys who made these statements, or how the un-named 'local' proposed the Americans had been involved...
 
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Lake disappears suddenly in Chile

Scientists in Chile are investigating the sudden disappearance of a glacial lake in the south of the country.

When park rangers patrolled the area in the Magallanes region in March, the two-hectare (five-acre) lake was its normal size, officials say.

But last month they found a huge dry crater and several stranded chunks of ice that used to float on the water.

One theory is that an earthquake opened up a fissure in the ground, allowing the lake's water to drain through.

"In March we patrolled the area and everything was normal," said Juan Jose Romero from Chile's National Forestry Corporation, Conaf.

"We went again in May and to our surprise we found that the lake had completely disappeared. All that was left were chunks of ice and an enormous fissure."

Geologists and other experts are being sent to the area, which is some 2,000km (1,250 miles) south of the capital, Santiago, to investigate.

The region is shaken by frequent earth tremors and one idea is that a strong quake which hit the neighbouring region of Aysen in April opened up the fissure in the bottom of the lake.

A glacier specialist, Andres Rivera, told Chilean newspaper La Tercera that the lake's disappearance seemed to be part of the continual reforming of the landscape.

The Magallanes area "has seen interesting changes in the last few decades," he said, noting that the lake itself had not been there 30 years ago.

Story from BBC NEWS:

Published: 2007/06/21 09:57:45 GMT

© BBC MMVII
 
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Here's the 'before and after' photos illustrating the 2007 Chilean lake disappearance story ...

1.jpg

 
Ahem.
Lake: has a river, stream, brook or spring running inlet. It also has a similar running outlet.
Pond: only fed via rainfall, land drainage or seepage.

Size, it turns out, doesn't matter...

As per Wikipedia: Sounds like the distinction between ponds and lakes is a bit vague. Not that Wikipedia is the end all answer.
We have lots of bodies of water in our part of the country. One named Mendon Pond is > 30 acres and has an inlet. Yet I've seen a few that were less than 10 acres that are referred to as lakes? I will add most of the smaller bodies of water that are called lakes ~(10 to 100) acres do at least have seasonal streams - creeks inlets and or outlets..
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pond

 
"pond" is from the same root as "pound" meaning an enclosure. (Compare with "impound.") Therefore you might have a mill pond formed by a dam and forming a small reservoir for a watermill. You might have a dew pond: a small artificial hollow that collects rainwater for livestock.

However, "pond" is now used for any relatively small body of still water, whether or not it has an inlet or outlet. In normal use, a "lake" is larger than a "pond" regardless of whether either of them is natural or artificial, and regardless of whether they are fed by a spring or stream, or drained by a stream.
 
Based on the bodies of water I've encountered the term is more loosely defined (as is indicated by Wikipedia). Yes ponds for the most part are much smaller in surface area than most lakes - reservoirs. But for a body of water to be officially named in the northeast USA, Ontario and Quebec it required official approval (as per topographical maps). What definition the governing bodies follow when officially naming bodies of water in the Northeastern part of North America I don't know. However the fact remains we have ponds well in excess of 30 acres and lakes well under 10 acres.
 
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Here's a 2006 disappearing lake story from Florida involving Scott Lake.

Lake goes down the drain as sinkholes appear
Two giant sinkholes almost completely drained a lake, leaving dead fish rotting on oozing mud flats and alligators and snapping turtles fighting for their lives.

Scott Lake began draining last week, and the larger of the two sinkholes grew this week to at least 200 feet wide and 15 feet deep, claiming a dock, concrete walkway and chain-link fence.

“It’s heartbreaking,” said Linda Logan, a member of a local homeowners’ association.

The 291-acre natural lake is owned by the surrounding homeowners south of Lakeland, 30 miles east of Tampa. Residents formed a committee to figure out what to do.

The lake could be restored. If the sinkholes are filled in, rain and runoff would refill the lake, but that could take years, and experts say they would have to wait for the lake to finish draining first.

Sinkholes form when groundwater levels drop, leaving empty crevices and cavities in the limestone aquifer.

SOURCE: http://www.nbcnews.com/id/13481962/ns/us_news-life/t/lake-goes-down-drain-sinkholes-appear/
.
 
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As of summer 2018 Scott Lake has 'returned' ...

Scott Lake residents delight in return from sinkhole that swallowed all water, wildlife in 2006
Robin Wickman stood on his wooden dock on a recent afternoon, tossing bread onto the surface of Scott Lake and watching as fish exploded from below to devour it.

Wickman doesn’t take such placid moments for granted. It seems not so long ago when people living along the lake watched in disbelief as fish — not to mention otters and alligators and countless gallons of water — were being swallowed by a yawning crevasse in the lake bed.

That June 2006 event, when a large sinkhole formed near the southern shore, is an unforgettable occurrence for Wickman and others who were living near Scott Lake at the time. The body of water south of Lakeland lost much of its volume within a few days, creating scenes of almost biblical havoc. ...

Wickman and his neighbors are delighted that such discoveries are no longer available to them. The water level on the 285-acre lake is back to normal, allowing Wickman to return his boat to a dock that for several years had been standing on dry land.

... The most recent survey by the Southwest Florida Water Management District measured Scott Lake’s water surface at 168 feet above sea level, senior hydrologist Don Ellison said. That’s about a foot above the pre-sinkhole level, he said. The lake’s surface level dropped as low as 155 feet above sea level following the 2006 episode, Ellison said.

To put it another way, the lake had a maximum depth of 13 feet before the sinkhole formed, and afterward Ellison said it consisted of scattered pools only a few feet deep.

It took a decade or so, but the recovery of Scott Lake has been a natural process that Ellison and other experts predicted would occur. Sediment eventually clogged the sinkhole, preventing water from continuing to drain into the Floridan Aquifer, the underground reservoir that fills a vast network of holes in the limestone underlying the entire peninsula.

With the drain clogged, water entering the lake through rainfall raised the water level.

Scott Lake, like most lakes in Florida, was created by a sinkhole that later filled with water, Ellison said. The carbonate rock underlying the peninsula is porous and readily dissolved by water, and the topography, known as karst, is prone to sinkholes.

Ellison said the effects of lake-bed sinkholes are most noticeable in water bodies set relatively high above sea level, as Scott Lake. The larger the distance between the lake bottom and the aquifer, the more water can drain out through a sinkhole.

Eventually the water level settles, Ellison said, and natural processes begin blocking the holes.

“Sediment washes in over time and settles out of the water,” he said. “The organics in the lake will get filtered into the sand and clog up the pores in the sand, and after a while it will seal itself up a little bit.” ...

FULL STORY & PHOTOS: http://www.theledger.com/news/20180...ole-that-swallowed-all-water-wildlife-in-2006
 
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