Here’s a new one for you — a traveling lake! Believe it or not (but you should believe it because it’s true). It just happened in California’s Death Valley National Park. Sustained high winds blew the recently created Lake Manly about two miles north. The winds also sped up evaporation, lowering the water level, which was about a foot deep a couple of weeks ago. To protect natural resources, the National Park Service now prohibits park visitors from boating on the shallow lake.
“It was amazing to see an entire lake migrate!” said Superintendent Mike Reynolds. “But now the water is drying up, leaving wide mudflats. People were walking a long way, sometimes dragging their boats. This leaves footprints and drag marks that will likely be visible for years. This left us with no choice but to curtail boating on historic Lake Manly at this time.”
In normal years, people see miles of salt flats at Badwater Basin. In some areas, the salt is fractured and uplifted into photogenic polygon shapes.
Every few years there is enough rain to cover the salt flat and create a temporary lake, informally known as Lake Manly, which was the name of a giant lake that once covered the valley. Usually, it is only gets a couple of inches deep.
But this most recent version of the Death Valley lake returned after the remnants of Hurricane Hilary brought 2.2 inches of rain in August. The lake slowly shrank until an atmospheric river brought another 1.5 inches in early February. For almost a month, people had a rare opportunity to kayak on Lake Manly, which was six miles long, three miles wide, and one foot deep.
Things changed February 29 through March 2. Forty-mile-per-hour winds pushed the water two miles to the north. The lake spread out to cover more area, but at a shallower depth. The winds and increased surface area increased evaporation. A place that people had launched boats 10 feet from the road turned into a salty mud flat.
When the winds stopped, the water slowly sloshed back to its original lakebed. What is left is shallower and muddier than it was before.
Due to the changed conditions, the National Park Service no longer allows people to attempt to boat on Lake Manly. Doing so would involve walking through mud, leaving footprints in the mud flat. These footprints or boat drag marks will likely stay as scars on the landscape until the next time Lake Manly returns.
“Visitors for the next few years would prefer to see the natural polygon designs in the salt, rather than hard-crusted footprints and deep boat drag marks,” said Reynolds.
People are encouraged to walk out into the lake (or onto the salt flat) from the Badwater Basin parking lot, staying on already-compacted surfaces.
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Thank you, RV Travel! That must have been a wondrous sight when the lake moved. 🤔😯 When we lived in Virginia, near Mt. Vernon, we commuted on the George Washington Parkway, which runs along the Potomac River on the southern end of the parkway. A few times the winds were strong enough to blow much of the water downstream, leaving the shipping channel clearly visible in the middle of marshy ground that was normally under several inches of water. Thanks again and safe travels! 🙂
I lived in DC/Northern VA from 1950 to 1979 Never saw anything like you’re describing but it sounds cool.
We were there from June 1991 until May 2017 and commuted daily in and out of DC via the Parkway. We lived in the Mount vernon area the entire time and only saw this once, maybe twice. It was shocking to see how shallow much of the Potomac is at least from around Fort Hunt to Riverside Park (between the Parkway and the water as you near Mount Vernon). I was driving home when I noticed it and it lasted for a day or two.
This is fantastic. Something else we can’t control. Love that story.
The only thing disturbing is the closing access to avoid footprints…. really, REALLY?, humans have been leaving footprints in mud for a millenia. It’s part of the story and 20, 80 or 150 years from now, it would be part of the “lake shifting 2 miles story”. Let the kids play.