13 Lakes That Vanished in a Single Day

A river ran for centuries, then emptied in four days. Thirteen lakes and rivers that vanished overnight, and the one rule underneath all of them. From a lake in Oregon that drains down a lava tube every summer, to a Louisiana whirlpool that swallowed a drilling rig and eleven barges in three hours, to the Yukon river that simply changed oceans in 2016. Documented cases stay sourced; the local legends around them are told as legends and labeled as such. Underneath all thirteen is the same pattern: decades of quiet loading while every gauge read completely normal, then a storm or a drill bit gets the blame. The video ends on the number that makes this everyone's problem — roughly fifteen million people living downhill from a glacial lake. Watch next: "13 Unexplained Events That Were Quietly Solved" #lakes #geology #mysteries Chapters: 0:00 The River That Quit 1:00 What This List Covers 1:48 13: Lost Lake, Oregon 3:03 12: Lake Chesterfield, Missouri 4:06 11: Lake Jackson, Florida 5:21 10: Lake Beloye, Russia 7:01 9: Lake Delton, Wisconsin 8:20 8: Lake Delhi, Iowa 9:38 7: Lake Emma, Colorado 11:14 6: Lake Peigneur, Louisiana 13:30 5: Dig Tso, Nepal 14:44 4: Grimsvotn, Iceland 16:23 3: Lago Tempanos, Chile 17:35 2: Lago Cachet Two 18:41 1: The Slims River 21:15 Why Gauges Never Warn 21:49 We Are Making More 22:28 Fifteen Million Downhill 23:35 Long Fuse, Short Bang Image credits: "Street of village Privalovo in winter" by savage19 on Panoramio.com, CC BY-SA 3.0 - https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index... "Lake Svetloyar - 2025-06-29 01" by Дмитрий Сазанов, CC BY 4.0 - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi... "File:San Juan Mountains, Colorado (7235123354).jpg" by Ken Lund from Reno, Nevada, USA, CC BY-SA 2.0 - https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index... "Aerial View of Peaks of Khumbu, Ngozumpa Glacier and Gokyo L" by Original: Megaurab09 Derivative work: UnpetitproleX, CC BY-SA 4.0 - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi... "Skeidararsandur-10-Brueckenruine-2018-gje" by Gerd Eichmann, CC BY-SA 4.0 - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi... "Grimsvötn August 2011" by Boaworm, CC BY-SA 3.0 - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi... "Vatnajökull, Iceland (50354471148)" by europeanspaceagency, CC BY-SA 2.0 - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi... "Monument "Old Bridge at Skeiðarársandur" - panoramio" by Maris Teteris, CC BY 3.0 - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi... "Río Baker detrás de Tortel" by Manxuc, CC BY-SA 4.0 - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi... "Slim's River Valley" by Jakub Fryš, CC BY-SA 4.0 - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi... "Lago Kluane, Destruction Bay, Yukón, Canadá, 2017-08-25, DD " by Diego Delso, CC BY-SA 4.0 - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi... "Kluane Lake Research Station (22339301048)" by James Badger from Calgary, Canada, CC BY 2.0 - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi...