By the evening edition.
Hundreds of hectares of fields, houses, power grids… After the violent storms that hit the United States this winter, an agricultural and industrial area on the west coast was completely swallowed up by… a once dry lake.
It could be the setting for a horror movie. In California (USA), a strange “zombie lake” or “ghost lake”, as it is nicknamed, has appeared in recent weeks in the middle of an agricultural and industrial area, flooding “fields, houses and electrical networks”, recount The Guardian . In this vast expanse of water, only “an irrigation pipe or fence post” sometimes appear, “reminding passers-by and the authorities responsible for patrolling the lake of what lies under the water”.
Read also: In California, three weeks of storms and deadly floods
As the British media recalls, this appearance is explained by “the awakening” of the ancient Lake Tulare, once considered the largest body of fresh water west of the Mississippi. The latter, which had been drained, had since completely dried up, making the Central Valley (Central Valley) the agricultural heartland of California.
“Underwater, diesel fuel, oil, manure, chemicals…”
But the violent storms, which hit the region this winter, caused the re-emergence of this lake. And so this change of scenery which has led to multiple losses. “Hundreds of hectares of cotton, tomato and pistachio fields, workers’ houses, roads…”, summarizes the journalist Dani Anguiano. The fish have now taken over the place, and the birds are flying all around the lake.
Read also: An impressive waterspout forms on the surface of a lake in Switzerland
Contacted by The GuardianNate Ferrier, sergeant at the county sheriff’s office, however, advises against swimming in the lake, while many curious people flock there to photograph it: “Underwater you have diesel fuel, oil, manure, chemicals used to kill insects. »
Several floods between 1938 and 2017
The lake should retain “its current size for at least one year”, regional officials say. Moreover, “Experts warn that it could continue to spread and call on the authorities to take more measures, in particular to put in place a coordinated plan to fight against the floods”, concludes Dani Anguiano.
Read also: Rescued from the waters 50 years ago, the ghost village of Salagou comes back to life
However, this is not the first time that this ghost lake has reappeared. “Since the lake was drained in the early 1900s, it has been seasonally flooded again in 1938, 1955, 1983, 1997 and 2017,” accurate to Newsweek Nicholas Pinter, Professor of Applied Geosciences. With climate change, its reappearance could be more and more common in the years to come.
