Rain-Swollen Lake Bursts Bank and Disappears
June 18, 2008 · Print This Article
Nature doesn’t mess around. One look at this photo makes it clear how much power the forces of nature really hold, and how helpless we can be to their destruction. The photo shows two employees of Tommy Bartlett’s Water Show trying to clean debris and dead fish out of the empty bed of Lake Delton in Wisconsin, which was once a picturesque 267-acre vacation destination.
From the Chicago Tribune:
Weekend rains of biblical proportions dumped so much water into Lake Delton that it literally burst its banks.
Tens of thousands of gallons of lake water barreled through the woods, taking with it a roadway, several houses, boats, fish and lake bed. It emptied into the nearby Wisconsin River and was gone in hours.
On Tuesday morning, some 24 hours after the catastrophe, the massive lake is nearly drained. The lake is a muddy moonscape of cracked earth. Fish bake in the sun, flopping until their deaths. Mounds of dead fish are piled high. The shoreline is jagged and cracked. Boats hang in the air suspended by what is left of the docks. In parts, the little water that is left meanders like a silent brook. The roadway and earth that held the river back is now a grand canyon.
Lake Delton was formerly a lively scene of water skiing, fishing, and other recreation. State officials have vowed to refill the lake as soon as possible, but residents are afraid the lake will never be the same again. And it may not – the lake was artificially created by damming Dell Creek. Sounds like nature took things into its own hands and turned the man-made lake back into a creek, as it was originally.
Link [Chicago Tribune]
Photo credit: Chicago Tribune/ E. Jason Wambsgans
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mother nature once again proves she is in charge.