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.
A Giant Drain
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?
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.
An Architectural Rarity
Evan Kilkus uploaded the video footage he captured with his drone to his YouTube channel. As viewers began watching it, they probably weren’t totally sure what they were looking at. People were very confused at what they were watching, but also intrigued. It may have seemed like an isolated phenomenon, and truthfully, it was.
The bellmouth-shaped spillway is also referred to as the “glory hole” is pretty rare to see. In the entire world, there are only a handful of spillways that were constructed in a similar fashion. You would find them in places that you did not expect to see them.
Spillways And Beyond
Evan was in the right place at the right time, and didn’t even know it. He was able to capture something that was so rare to see, as well as capturing a rare architectural design. A bell-mouth spillway is fairly uncommon, but it’s able to funnel a large amount of water while still maintaining a pretty steady flow. This spillway was the only one of its kind in the entire state.
If you want to travel to other areas of the world to see similar spillways, you can head to England, Montana, Hong Kong, and Japan. As previously stated, these spillways are not normally dangerous, but there was at least one known spillway that ended badly.