When the water of Lake Berryessa becomes 440 feet over sea level, the water floods the spillway funnel and suddenly disappears, coming out on the other side of the dam. On a smaller scale, it’s like what happens when you pull the drain out of your kitchen sink after washing dishes.
A giant hole appears out of nowhere in the lake. This hole measures 28 feet at the base and 75 feet across. That is pretty big! When the water passes through, it drops down more than 200 feet out of the lake. This raised a lot of questions, one of the most important being, how dangerous could this hole be to those who got close to it when it opened up?
The Inevitable Drought
When the weather was normal in California, the water would tend to be low enough that no one had to ever really worry about flooding into the spillway. This seemed to be a trend for roughly a decade, due to a record-breaking drought. This, of course, caused the water levels to be much lower than normal.
The stone “bell-mouth”, which was the entrance to the funnel in the dam, was now able to be used by skateboarders to practice. But out of nowhere, something major happened, and it’s the mysterious thing Evan had discovered.
Rainy Days
Before everyone’s eyes, the drought suddenly came to a screeching halt when California started to experience a ton of rain. There were some things that benefited from all this rain, and the wine-producing Napa region that surrounded Lake Berryessa was one of them.
The vineyards took a pretty nasty hit during the drought, and they weren’t producing hardly at all. However, things at Lake Berryessa were a little different. There had been so much rain filling the lake that it reached its’ maximum capacity. This caused something amazing to happen, which caught the attention of locals and tourists alike.
An Intimidating View
When you first see it, it looks like something out of a movie. And in the movie, you would expect some thrilling moment where someone gets sucked into it and doesn’t make it out alive. However, the engineers who built this structure knew that it could be a liability, so they kept that in mind when constructing it.
They had built guard barriers in the water surrounding it so in an attempt to keep people away from it. An onlooker wouldn’t notice these barriers since they are in the water. Even though these barriers exist, it is known to have a deadly past. Although Evan Kilkus and his drone friend were able to capture some pretty amazing footage and photos, the risks just may surprise you.
Not As Dangerous
After speaking with experts, they claim that the hole in Lake Berryessa is not all that dangerous, as long as people don’t get too close to it while they are swimming. Although it has such a large capacity, its pull isn’t as strong as you would think. It’s certainly quite the intimidating structure.
The lake flooded with over 30 feet of water when California experienced sudden bouts of rain. Even with the flooding, the average swimmer would typically be strong enough to swim away from the spillway. However, there was something else that was pretty rare and different about the spillway hole at Lake Berryessa.