Wheeeeeeeee!

September 27, 2017 3:27 PM

It's February of this year and California has been drenched by a number of pounding storms filling its reservoirs. No better time to pull out our drones and take a mesmerizing ride into the mouth of Lake Berryessa's vertical spillway as it drains for the first time in over a decade.

Or, if you like cinematics and/or the Standells more, this alternative.

Bell-mouth spillways (sometimes "morning glories" or as per Berryessa the titter-inducing (previously) "glory hole") are not super-common and drain overflow straight down and around the dam rather than over-topping a controlled point in the dam. Berryessa's spillway is apparently the largest in the world, capable of draining 48,400 ft³/s (1370 m³/s), enough to empty a Superdome full of water in a little under 45 minutes.

posted by Ogre Lawless (32 comments total)

that made me thirsty for some reason
posted by numaner at 3:46 PM on September 27, 2017 [1 favorite]

When this first made the rounds earlier this year I remember being shocked that it had been so long since the spillway was active. Drought conditions are so omnipresent in California and I had no idea that the spillway only drained during periods of heavy rain.

(Which makes sense, as the last time I recall stopping at Lake Berryessa was on the way to spend the night at Robert Ferguson Observatory in spring...1986.)
posted by elsietheeel at 3:51 PM on September 27, 2017

That was beautiful and mesmerizing and maybe a little terrifying. I really like that combination, it seems.
posted by ezust at 3:54 PM on September 27, 2017 [4 favorites]

You probably don't want to swim near that thing.
posted by Bee'sWing at 3:56 PM on September 27, 2017 [2 favorites]

Back in March, I found myself at a cafe in Winters, California, where a perky young barista asked, "Are you here to visit our glory hole?"

I had to ask her to repeat herself and then stammered that I wasn't in charge of plans.

Later, a friend explained and we drove up to Lake Berryessa. It was pretty spectacular.
posted by roger ackroyd at 3:57 PM on September 27, 2017 [33 favorites]

My inlaws live near there, beautiful country when it's not on fire.
posted by octothorpe at 3:58 PM on September 27, 2017

You probably don't want to swim near that thing.

You may have heard of the Welsh tourist who came close to doing exactly that at Hoover Dam in Arizona.
posted by JackFlash at 4:26 PM on September 27, 2017

Beavis's friend looks great.
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 4:30 PM on September 27, 2017

Woooog, that's creepy as eff.
posted by hearthpig at 4:33 PM on September 27, 2017

Reminds me of the approach from Jamie XX's Gosh
posted by postcommunism at 4:35 PM on September 27, 2017 [1 favorite]

Skateboarding in the Glory Hole
posted by snuffleupagus at 4:49 PM on September 27, 2017 [4 favorites]

You probably don't want to swim near that thing.

Especially given that access to it is limited only by a bright orange version of those floaty things they use to separate the lanes in Olympic sized lap pools.
posted by mudpuppie at 4:51 PM on September 27, 2017

A woman did swim too close to it in 1997 and died. It's a 200 foot drop.
posted by late afternoon dreaming hotel at 5:18 PM on September 27, 2017

I shared the first link with friends under the header: "Dive into the Glory Hole with a drone!"
Then felt compelled to add: "Seriously, and perfectly safe for work."
posted by doctornemo at 5:28 PM on September 27, 2017

My favorite part is at the beginning when the drone operator is clearly waiting for the other drone to get out of the way before beginning their descent.

I wonder if soon we'll have some drone equivalent of the old "scenic viewpoints" they used to have by the side of the highway; preprogrammed coordinates that you can send your drone to to get the perfect shot. A little QR code by the highway you can scan, perhaps, and bloop your drone flies off to the appropriate spot.
posted by phooky at 5:51 PM on September 27, 2017 [10 favorites]

(2:00-on) - Hey, I used to have that visualizer on my mp3 software!
posted by Guy Smiley at 6:04 PM on September 27, 2017 [8 favorites]

Why no whirlpool at the drain, though? I thought this would be like a descent into the Maelstrom. Instead it's a wrapped-around waterfall. Cool, but, hmmm...
posted by SPrintF at 6:31 PM on September 27, 2017

I have never seen a drone video where I more desperately wished for a polarizing filter on the lens.
posted by komara at 6:56 PM on September 27, 2017

Why no whirlpool at the drain, though?

Because the drain is the funnel at the center of the vortex, I suppose? With the water in the lake swirling around it?

[NOT HYGRONOMIST]
posted by snuffleupagus at 7:04 PM on September 27, 2017

Maybe if there was a much deeper layer of water over the drain there would be more of a whirlpool effect.
posted by carter at 7:35 PM on September 27, 2017

Someone needs to drop a GoPro down that.

Also, the surfer (or Bart Simpson) in me wants to ride down it in a Zorb.

Like, I don't think anyone could survive it, but there's kind of a thing that happens with water and immovable objects, especially if they have laminar flow where you seem to be buffered a bit from impacts with, say, rocks or jetties while moving in/with a heavy flow of water, so... just maybe, maybe if you were a really, really lucky monkey of the right dumb constitution in the right barrel, maybe you could survive the drop and curve of the outflow pipe.

Assuming you could survive the forces of the water itself or simply not drown. The water itself would probably rip you to bits.
posted by loquacious at 7:42 PM on September 27, 2017

There was a rectangular morning glory spillway on a lake near where I grew up (Lake Jacksonville, TX - there was no fence when I was a kid) which I often heard called the "black hole." That thing scared the crap out of me when I was a kid - watching water spill over and just disappear. The craziest thing was the time I saw a fisherman standing on the edge while it was active, casting his line in and out. I have no idea how he got there, if he caught anything, or how he got off of it.
posted by fremen at 9:12 PM on September 27, 2017 [2 favorites]

There was a rectangular morning glory spillway on a lake near where I grew up (Lake Jacksonville, TX - there was no fence when I was a kid)

I was hoping to find other photos of it, but most of the search results did not involve limnology.
posted by sebastienbailard at 9:36 PM on September 27, 2017

I can't be the only one to look at that first link and think, "Doomsday Machine."

(/StarTreknerdery)
posted by bryon at 3:05 AM on September 28, 2017

The curve has a 15 foot radius. Most of the pipe is only 7 feet across. Just go bungie jumping during a hurricane.
posted by Brocktoon at 4:18 AM on September 28, 2017 [2 favorites]

That was really cool, and I'd like to see it in person someday.

But the music will be stuck in my head the rest of the day! I know what it is but can't place it. Anyone?
posted by james33 at 5:07 AM on September 28, 2017

In an ideal world, they'd slope the tunnel more gradually so it would be the world's most fun slide instead of a death trap.
posted by Grither at 8:03 AM on September 28, 2017 [2 favorites]

A large portion of my wife's parent's farm was taken over for a secondary reservoir and we occasionally went swimming in it.
In the weeks after a heavy rain, there was a definite current towards the same structure in that.
posted by Burn_IT at 9:03 AM on September 28, 2017

This is how Leonard Susskind explains black holes.
posted by Devonian at 2:21 PM on September 28, 2017

Here's a video that shows what it looks like with and without water.
posted by dances with hamsters at 2:35 PM on September 28, 2017

The curve has a 15 foot radius. Most of the pipe is only 7 feet across.

It looks so much larger from the drone camera's perspective
posted by thelonius at 3:03 PM on September 28, 2017

The "mouth" is large, but narrows quickly. After the curve, it is narrowed even more by a "throttle", opens back up to 7 ft, and empties into a fairly large tunnel.
posted by Brocktoon at 3:48 AM on September 29, 2017