A thought occurred to me, and I just did a comparison of what Andong Lake looked like on October 24 versus this past Saturday, November 12. What a difference in water level!
October 24:
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| maybe hard to see, but the water comes right up to the foliage |
November 12:
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| water level's way down |
So in about 19 days, the lake lost 5-8 meters of its depth. God only knows how many millions of tons that represents. Pretty awesome when you think about it.
Let's think about it, then. I just looked up Andong Lake's surface area, and it's about 51.5 square kilometers. Let's average out my guess of 5-8 meters of depth lost: 6.5 m. Multiply 6.5 m by 51.5 km, and you get a volume of 334,750 cubic meters. Using a conversion app I found via Google, I get a weight of 3,334,750 metric tons (a metric ton = 1000 kg, or about 2,200 pounds). What could have caused that loss? Evaporation? Passage of water through the dam to the Nakdong River on the other side? Korean dragons that sneak out to the riverside at night and slurp thousands of gallons of water when no one's looking? Something else?
Spooky.
ADDENDUM: in reading about the lake's surface area, I discovered that the dam essentially created the lake, so Andong Lake is man-made.
Years ago, the same thing happened at Daejeon's main dam late in the year. It seems that after the rainy season a lot of water was released so work infrastructure work could be done on the dam and dams and areas upstream. It was crazy how low they had to lower the level of the lake though. Old town sites and temples even reemerged. I also think that one year water was released ahead of a typhoon, but it was nowhere near as drastic. I know several lakes in Texas that do the same thing whenever a hurricane is approaching the Texas coast.
ReplyDeleteI got curious and looked up "Daejeon dam" on Google. A big result was "Daecheong Dam," which appears to be located near Daejeon City. Is that the dam you're talking about? Looks impressive. I might need to go pay it a visit.
ReplyDeleteYes. I was too lazy to look it up right before dozing off after a rough day. Growing old isn't for wimps.
ReplyDelete