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.
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.
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.
Napa County Crisis
The heavy rains main have been flooding the spillway, but that wasn’t the only catastrophe that people were worried about. There was a lake called Lake Oroville, and it was almost the same as Lake Berryessa, but with some minor differences. The similarities included that it was a man-made body of water, the dam was rather large, and it had a spillway. This spillway was designed much differently than the one in Lake Berryessa.
The waters had increased and it began to flood out of the dam, and became a threat to those living in the area. A whopping 18,000 people had to evacuate. Even though that was all going on, there were still more surprises to come for Evan back at Lake Berryessa.
Growing Interest
At first, Evan didn’t realize how rare what he captured was. It didn’t take long for other people in the area to notice the same thing. The word about the hole in Lake Berryessa was spreading like wildfire. People were flooding the area after Evan’s YouTube video had people in awe.
There were tons of people and drones flying around trying to capture this rare sighting. This wouldn’t be the only time he stumbled upon something amazing.