> Informally known as Lake Manly, the fleeting pool is about 6 miles long, 3 miles wide and just 1 foot deep.
That's about 1.421e10 liters of water, which WolframAlpha tells me is 3.5% of the volume of all living humans, and coincidentally the United States has about 4% the world's current population, so this lake has approximately as much volume as the population of the US. (Calculating the deviation in volume between the average American and the average human left as an exercise for the reader.)
That’s fantastic. I propose a new unit, big gulps per American place, in the spirit of the other great American units, “large boulder” and “small boulder”:
- One Big Gulp for every Kansan is one Olympic sized swimming pool
- One Super Big Gulp for every Texan is about one Exxon Valdez oil spill
- 1776 Big Gulps for every American, times a thousand Americas, is almost exactly the annual flow of our own beautiful Mississippi River. If that doesn’t bring a patriotic tear to your eye I don’t know what will.
I’ve always wanted to bring some scuba equipment and dive into the one-foot-deep lake when it’s there, just so I could tell everyone that my deepest dive was 282 feet below sea level.
Real ironic was the day the LA (Los Angeles) DWP (Department of Water and Power) declared drought water restrictions on a day we got so much rain we almost had Lake San Fernando Valley. The Sepulveda Dam Recreation area did, indeed, flood. One of those "why do we have all these dams with no water in LA" moments.
Germany has no wilderness. "Nature kills you" is a concept that basically doesn't exist in Germany. As a healthy adult, "getting lost" is a minor annoyance, not genuine danger.
See for yourself: Open Google Maps, zoom in on a random spot, pick a random direction, and tell me how far you have to walk until you'll find a pub or a road that will lead you to one. Repeat as often as you want.
The first spot I got was 60 meters from the nearest forest path, the longest you could walk in a straight line without finding a forest path was 400 meters, and the nearest pub was 500 meters as the crow flies.
The second was much worse: 80 meters, 800 meters, 1.6 km for the same three metrics. Third: 10m, 230m, 1.2km. 4th: 140m, 800m, 600m 5th: 55m, 380m, 2.2km unless you count the Kebap place 1.8km away. You will be hearing the Autobahn the whole time.
The weather is also much less extreme. 41° C (106° F) seems to be the current heat record (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_extreme_temperatures_i...), but this is extreme, newsworthy heat, not common. Most of the time in most of Germany you can expect -10 to +35° C (from nighttime in Winter to daytime in Summer).
In summer, basically, t-shirt, shorts with 10 EUR in cash for the beer in a pocket, and sandals with socks will probably be all you need to survive. Everything else (water bottle, a way to navigate) are optional comfort items.
Somewhat related, it's hard to find things like Gatorade powder. "Rehydrating" on a serious mountain hike, the kind with 10,000ft peaks means stopping by at the nearest alpine hut, and drinking a liter or so of beer. I grew up (to age 13) in Germany but on adult visits, felt like a fish out of water, with my sandwiches and water bottles.
It doesn't get Death Valley hot (few places do), and Germany has no deserts. Combine that with the German fascination with the Old West and you've got a recipe for disaster. They see the terrain, figure they can handle it because they go hiking in mountains all the time. They can handle the terrain; what they can't handle is the environment.
That's a wasteland, but probably not a desert. Per the link, it gets 569 mm of rain a year; dry, certainly compared to most of Germany, but most definitions of "desert" run around 250 mm/yr (consensus, but even if the cutoff is off by a little bit, it's over twice that). By comparison, Denver, which is arid but not a desert by anyone's imagination, is around 368 mm/yr.
I'm making this a separate reply because I just realized that this is one of those language confusion things. If Germans think a desert is a place without plants, regardless of water resources, they will wander out into places that Americans and Australians call deserts, which are insanely dry, thinking that of course there must be water somewhere. In the US and Aus, if someone says "that's a desert", you should be carrying 10+ liters per day per person and some extra if you get into trouble. Do not assume that you will find water anywhere.
If you go remember to thoroughly clean your kayak and other gear so that you aren't transporting invasive aquatic species to the area. Even though it is usually a desert, you can introduce something that will be hard to detect until the next big rain and hard to remediate.
I think the question is about which non-native invasive plant or organism can survive long periods without water.
I don't think we need to use Death Valley as a test bed.
Normal practice is to wash all your gear before you visit a new body of water so that you don't spread things between them. I said normal as if that is the way boaters operate. Invasive species spreading all over lakes in Texas would suggest that the normal case is quite different here.
Since the responsibility for compliance falls on the boaters, kayakers, canoeists, then we are stuck with whatever they consider normal. That's the problem. A lot of people fail at simple tasks designed to preserve wild places for later generations enjoyment.
FWIW when I’ve been in states they actually cared about this there were literal kayak inspection stations on the road. I think perhaps I saw this in Montana?
It is a good vector to check and ensure. I’m kind of curious whether it’s an actual common vector or not
It is a big problem and all it takes is one visitor who neglected to clean the boat they had used in an affected body of water before boating in a pristine body of water. Here is only one example. [0]
The problem also occurs for things that grow on land and can be pretty difficult to deal with. [1]
Ecosystem changes due to introduction of non-native species is a global problem. [2]
Texas is like Montana in that we have notices and instructions posted on many popular lakes and on the TPWD (Texas Parks and Wildlife Dept) website. The problem is that many people do not see these notices and they regularly visit multiple lakes during the boating season. I personally think it is a common vector.
[0] https://www.nps.gov/subjects/invasive/aquatic-invasive-speci...
I went after the park re-opened to see the lake and it was pretty magical. At the time they were expecting it could dry up pretty quickly. Pretty cool it's lasted this long. The lake history of the great basin is pretty fascinating, during the last Ice Age glacial period much of Nevada and Eastern CA were giant lakes.
Just visited in January of this year and the Badwater Basin with water in it is stunning. Seeing the sunset there in these conditions is breathtaking and a must do experience if you live within a day's drive of the park!
That's about 1.421e10 liters of water, which WolframAlpha tells me is 3.5% of the volume of all living humans, and coincidentally the United States has about 4% the world's current population, so this lake has approximately as much volume as the population of the US. (Calculating the deviation in volume between the average American and the average human left as an exercise for the reader.)