The Lake Peigneur drilling disaster is unbelievable! That catastrophic man-made event drained an entire lake, swallowed up eleven barges, many trees and 65 acres (260,000 m2) of land into a salt mine shaft, creating the biggest waterfall of Louisiana. The Lake Peigneur drilling disaster in 1980.
What are the major bodies of water in Louisiana?
Louisiana Lakes Shown on the Map: Bayou D' Arbonne Lake, Caddo Lake, Calcasieu Lake, Catahoula Lake, Claiborne Lake, Cross Lake, Grand Lake, Lac des Allemands, Lake Bistinea, Lake Maurepas, Lake Pontchatrain, Lake Salvador, Sabine Lake, Toledo Bend Reservoir and White Lake.
What is the Lake Peigneur drilling disaster in Louisiana?
The Lake Peigneur drilling disaster is unbelievable! That catastrophic man-made event drained an entire lake, swallowed up eleven barges, many trees and 65 acres (260,000 m2) of land into a salt mine shaft, creating the biggest waterfall of Louisiana. The Lake Peigneur drilling disaster in 1980.
How was the largest waterfall of Louisiana created?
The lake started rushing into the hole expanding its size while filling up the enormous caverns left by the removal of salt over the years. The largest waterfall of Louisiana was created by the Lake Peigneur drilling disaster.
What is the deepest lake in Louisiana?
With a maximum depth of 200 feet, Lake Peigneur is the deepest lake in Louisiana, but it wasn’t always that deep. Prior to 1980, the lake was fairly shallow, with a maximum depth of about 11 feet. But on November 20, 1980, an oil rig owned by Texaco was doing some exploratory drilling and accidentally struck the salt mine underneath the lake.
What is the biggest waterfall in Louisiana?
When was the Lake Peigneur drilling disaster?
How deep is Lake Peigneur?
What company mines Lake Peigneur?
How did they refill Lake Peigneur?
When the lake emptied, water from the Delcambre Canal, which connects Lake Peigneur with the Gulf of Mexico, reversed course and created a 150-foot waterfall until the lake was refilled with brackish instead of fresh water. Nine of the 11 barges eventually bobbed to the surface.
What is the deepest lake in Louisiana?
Lake PeigneurLake Peigneur is a small saltwater lake near the Vermilion Bay in south Louisiana. The lake has a maximum depth of 200 feet and is the deepest lake in Louisiana.
When did Lake Peigneur sink?
November 20, 1980It was a 10-foot-deep (3 m) freshwater body, popular with sportsmen, until an unusual man-made disaster on November 20, 1980 changed its structure and the surrounding land.
What caused the Lake Peigneur disaster?
On November 20, 1980, a normal day on the Lake Peigneur was abruptly interrupted by the tremors of a 14-inch Texaco drill bit which made a catastrophic error due to a misread map that misplaced the exploratory drilling operation. Instead of striking black oil, they hit white salt.
What is the deepest lake in United States?
Crater LakeAt 1,943 feet (592 meters), Crater Lake is the deepest lake in the United States and one of the deepest in the world. The depths were first explored thoroughly in 1886 by a party from the U.S. Geological Survey.
What are the major lakes in Louisiana?
The 12 Biggest Lakes in LouisianaLake Claiborne. Having a surface area of 6400 acres, Lake Claiborne is the 12th largest lake in Louisiana. ... Black Lake. ... Cross Lake. ... Lac des Allemands. ... Lake D'Arbonne. ... Caddo Lake. ... Catahoula Lake. ... Calcasieu Lake.More items...•
What lake in Louisiana was drained into a salt mine?
Lake PeigneurLake Peigneur used to drain into Vermilion Bay via the Delcambre Canal, but once the lake had emptied into the mine, the canal changed direction and salt water from the Gulf of Mexico flooded into the muddy lake bed. (To this day, Lake Peigneur has a brackish ecosystem very different from the way it was in 1980.)
Are there fish in Lake peigneur?
Striped bassLargemouth bassSmallmouth bassWhite bassSpotted bassLake Peigneur/Fish
What happened to the salt mine at Jefferson Island?
The 1980 Drilling Disaster On November 20, 1980 a drilling rig pierced one of the giant caverns of the Diamond Crystal Salt Mine, flooding the entire mine. A vortex swallowed the lake, 65 acres of native wood land, a welcome center, a glass conservatory and a new home just built on the lake.
What kind of fish are in Lake Peigneur?
Striped bassLargemouth bassSmallmouth bassWhite bassSpotted bassLake Peigneur/Fish
Where is Big lake in Louisiana?
Calcasieu Lake is a brackish lake located in southwest Louisiana, United States, located mostly within Cameron Parish. The Lake, also known as Big Lake to the local population, is paralleled on its west shore by Louisiana Highway 27, and is located about 17 mi (27 km) south of Lake Charles, Louisiana.
What makes the salt domes of Louisiana unique?
Salt domes are prime places to drill for oil and natural gas. The salt which forms the dome is nearly impenetrable, being composed of compacted crystals. As the apex of the dome pushes upwards it bends the rock strata above and around it, creating empty pockets. These pockets often collect oil and natural gas.
What is the clearest lake in Louisiana?
The Clearest Lake In Louisiana, Lake Claiborne, Is Almost Too Beautiful To Be RealYou'll find Lake Claiborne tucked away in the rolling hills of northwestern Louisiana in Lake Claiborne State Park. ... The 6,400-acre man-made lake was formed when Bayou D'Arbonne was dammed in the 1970s.More items...•
What is the deepest part of Lake Pontchartrain?
65′Lake Pontchartrain / Max depth
Is Lake Pontchartrain really a lake?
At over 40 miles wide, Lake Pontchartrain is the second largest inland saltwater body in the United States. It covers 630 square miles, serves six Louisiana parishes and 1.5 million people. Though classified as a lake, Lake Pontchartrain is technically an estuary that connects to the Gulf of Mexico.
What is the average depth of Lake Pontchartrain?
12 feetLake Pontchartrain was formed 5,000 years ago, covering almost 630 square miles. The shallow Lake (average depth 12 feet) is brackish, receiving freshwater from Lake Maurepas, the Tangipahoa and Tchefuncte Rivers, Bayous Lacombe and Bonfouca, as well as drainage canals, and saltwater from the Gulf of Mexico.
Lake Peigneur Drilling Accident - YouTube
Oil driller breaches salt mine under a Louisiana lake.
What is the most beautiful lake in Louisiana?
One of the most beautiful lakes in Louisiana happens to be Lake Peigneur, which you’ll find just off the tip of Vermilion Bay in Iberia Parish.
How many barges popped out of the lake?
And once the water pressure stabilized and the lake wasn’t a massive whirlpool, nine of the eleven barges popped out of the water and came back to the surface.
How tall is the waterfall in Louisiana?
This back flow created a massive 164-foot waterfall for a few days, the tallest waterfall in Louisiana (but just temporarily). Wikimedia.
How deep is Lake Peigneur?
With a maximum depth of 200 feet, Lake Peigneur is the deepest lake in Louisiana, but it wasn’t always that deep.
When did Texaco hit the salt mine?
But on November 20, 1980 , an oil rig owned by Texaco was doing some exploratory drilling and accidentally struck the salt mine underneath the lake. Neal Bernard/Google.
How did Lake Delton get drained?
Heavy rains had raised the level of Lake Delton and put tremendous pressure on the dikes that separated the lake from the Wisconsin River 800 feet away. The sudden collapse of a 400-ft section of County Highway A that ran on top of the containment dike caused a deluge that completely drained Lake Delton in a matter of hours. Several lakefront homes also collapsed though there was no loss of life. Here’s a short video showing the state of the former Lake Delton 2 weeks after the water drained out:
What happened to the water in White Lake?
In May of 2005, residents of the village of Bolotnikovo near Nizhni Novgorod, Russia, were shocked to find that most of the water in White Lake had mysteriously vanished. No explanation could be offered for the sudden and silent loss of roughly a million cubic meters of water. “It looks like somebody has pulled the plug out of a gigantic bath,” said a correspondent fr Russia’s NTV. Though an official from a nearby village speculated that the lake’s water flowed into an underground river, others had their own suspicions, believing that “outside forces” were responsible. One man was quoted as stating “I think that America got us here.” It seems that in rural Russia at least, the Cold War never really ended.
How many acres is Scott Lake in Florida?
Scott Lake is a 291-acre natural lake in Lakeland, Florida, 30 miles east of Tampa. Like Lake Delhi, Scott Lake is owned by the surrounding homeowners who are once again asking state authorities to refill the lake and preserve their property values. Yes, “once again” – Scott Lake has drained before, in the early 1970s, caused by sinkholes opening up in the porous limestone bedrock that lies beneath the lake.
Why is Florida's freshwater aquifer in short supply?
This wasn’t a problem in 1974 but today, water is in short supply as Florida’s population puts increasing strain on the state’s fresh water supplies.
What happened to the Delhi Dam?
Call it a dammed shame, but many say the failure of the Delhi Dam was an accident waiting to happen. Flooding in 2008 had caused a half-million dollars worth of damage to the dam and exceptionally heavy rains (approximately 10 inches in 12 hours) caused the swollen lake to overtop its southern embankment on July 24, 2010.
When was Lake Delton reopened?
Wisconsin Governor Jim Doyle quickly announced the state would be repairing the lake and indeed, by Memorial Day of 2009 Lake Delton was re-opened with great fanfair.
When did Tempe Town Lake get swept?
On July 20, 2010, the west side of Tempe Town Lake’s outflow dam suffered (for want of a better term) a blowout that allowed most of the lake’s water to quickly drain into the Salt River. Most of the approximately 10,000 fish living in the lake were swept downstream and an alligator named Tuesday was released into the remaining pools of water to eat what fish remained.
What is the biggest waterfall in Louisiana?
The backwards flow of the normally outflowing Delcambre Canal temporarily created the biggest waterfall in Louisiana at 164 feet (50 m), as the lake refilled with salt water from the Delcambre Canal and Vermilion Bay.
When was the Lake Peigneur drilling disaster?
The Lake Peigneur drilling disaster in 1980. Picture via Youtube
How deep is Lake Peigneur?
With a maximum depth of 200 feet (61 m), it is the deepest lake in Louisiana. Follow us: Facebook and Twitter.
What company mines Lake Peigneur?
Lake Peigneur actually sat above a labyrinth of salt caverns mined by the Diamond Crystal Salt Company. On this November 20, 1980, a Texaco oil rig accidentally drilled into the mine under the lake.
