100-foot deep Andes lake disappears

[Recursion]

Source: CNN

A five-acre glacial lake in Chile's southern Andes has disappeared -- and scientists want to know why.

Park rangers at Bernardo O'Higgins National Park said they found a 100-feet-deep crater in late May where the lake had been in March. Several large pieces of ice that used to float atop the water also were spotted.

"The lake had simply disappeared," Juan Jose Romero, head of Chile's National Forest Service in the southernmost region of Magallanes, said Wednesday. "No one knows what happened."

...

A river that flowed out of the lake was reduced to a trickle.

Read more: http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/science/06/21/missing.lake.ap/index.html?eref=rss_topstories

---

How the hell do you lose three-quarters of a cubic mile of water?

[superconnected]

1. Aliens.

Stealing our water again...

JK.

[librechik]

18. no, Molemen--up from the vast underground network of caves

hidden underneath the continents.

They just turned on the tap for a few hours.

[slackmaster]

2. The water all flowed into Bush's Fault

How'd I do?

[BringBigDogBack]

14. excellent. :-)

[newyawker99]

19. Hi BringBigDogBack!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[mikelgb]

3. did someone suck it out?

[Sequoia]

9. Coca-Cola needed it.

[haele]

4. Earthquake activity?

That's the only way I can imagine a sudden "pulling the plug in the bathtub" effect for something that big. If there's still ice present that used to be floaters, the lake didn't just evaporate.

Haele

[Kber]

5. I don't know, but if I had to guess

a fault opened up under the lake and drained the water through it.

Or, if it was a glacial lake, an ice damn melted / broke.

Since it's a very isolated area, the effects were not immediately noticed.

[truthisfreedom]

6. Scary.

[piedmont]

7. To answer your question, it wasn't anywhere close to .75 cubic miles of water

It was .0000295928 cubic miles of water.

[Recursion]

10. d'oh! I was squaring rather than cubing

21,780,000 square feet is three quarters of a square mile.

Thanks for the catch.

[MNDemNY]

8. I took it. It's in my back yard. You can't have it back.

[monktonman]

11. Isnt water worth money?????

Big oil and Halliburton have been developing "safe" water systems in that part of the world for a long time. And charging high dollars for it of course.
Water is worth money and these guys steal everything else, why not water?
I know that sounds crazy but how hard would it be to stick a big hose in the lake and siphon all the water off to tanker trucks waiting below.
Again, I know it sounds crazy but why not?

[TheWraith]

12. Incredibly hard.

You would need hundreds or thousands of trucks to move that much water, huge industrial pumps to relocate it, thousands of people... not to mention, I get the feeling that this isn't a place that has full 4-lane paved roads heading to it.

[monktonman]

13. They seem to do a good enough job in Irag

Halliburton - hundreds of trucks and personnel?
Who needs a paved road when your the worlds number one pipeline company. Suck it outta there like a big crazy straw, divert it to your own canal miles away and call it your own.
I know it sounds crazy but I wouldn't put anything beyond them. $$$$$$$$water$$$$$$$$ Worth MORE than oil.

Ok, Ok I'm just dreaming. It was probably an earth quake

[Bozita]

15. If it's in South America, it's all the doings of that socialist Chavez!

There.

I've saved Bush the trouble.

[TX-RAT]

16. 5 acres = Lake?

Guess my 12 acre pond = Ocean

[DFW]

17. I heard that California was hard up for irrigation water

I just didn't know they would go to measures this extreme.........