Cape Karen
I recalled hearing something about a lake disappearing in Russia a few months back, and so, out of curiosity, I went looking for articles about it to find out more. "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."
Unlike Lake Nejapa in Managua, Nigeria that disappeared in the African desert in 1993 due to a severe drought, this lake didn't gradually dry-up and disappear. It went down in a big WHOOSH, like a giant bathtub emptying; in hours ~ not days, weeks, months or years. Theories run the gamut ~ from alien crafts sucking it dry, to the strange thought that we evil Americans piped it away, (we have enough of our own lakes- but thanks anyway) to underwater caves causing it to drain; but no one has yet determined the actual cause of the rapid disappearance of the lake.
I know that lakes do come and go, some even seasonally, and here we have our own Douglas Lake that is drained dry each winter and then re-filled each spring, but this wasn't a man-made or weather-related event. This was just plain WEIRD.
Surprisingly, while perusing this topic, I discovered that this is not an isolated incident. Many lakes have been disappearing all over the world during the last couple of decades. Lake Chesterfield, a twenty-three acre lake in Wildwood, MO disappeared in June of 2004. Goldsboro Lake in Pennslyvania emptied in 2003, Lake Chad in Nigeria is drying-up as we speak, and many lakes in the Arctic are disappearing faster than an ice cream cone on a hot summer's day, as stated below.
"In all, 125 lakes have vanished completely and are covered with vegetation, the researchers found in a study funded by the National Science Foundation. Subsequent monitoring has found that none of the lakes have refilled, the researchers report in their article, "Disappearing Arctic Lakes." What's interesting isn't just that we're seeing individual lakes disappear, Smith said. What's strange is that the process appears to be abrupt and irregular. From what we can tell from space, a lake is either fine or it's suddenly gone."
I'm hoping they will find the cause of the vanishing lakes and announce it to the world soon, before those UFO folks publish anymore of their exotic stories about aliens starting to take over our planet.
Besides, I have a son who lives in Minnesota ~ the land of 10,000 lakes ~ and if this keeps up they'll have to change their license plates every few years.
2008 "Minnesota: Land of 9,000 lakes."
2015 "Minnesota: Land of 7,000 lakes"
2023 "Minnesota: Land of 5,000 lakes"
And, Garrison Keeler would have to write a new book called: "The Disappearance of Lake Wobegon."
Posted by Karen at March 1, 2006 11:31 AM