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Whirlpools, or maelstroms, are rotating areas of water that can form when two tides or currents intersect while traveling different directions. The Greeks were so afraid of these treacherous seas that they personified one off the cost of Sicily as the fearsome sea monster Charybdis. Stories about whirlpools sucking whole ships under come from the imaginations of Edgar Allan Poe and Jules Verne, not from real life, but there was one strange whirlpool that, for a few days in 2015, was capable of swallowing at least some small boats. And it wasn't located off the Scandinavian or Scottish coasts—it was in a lake north of Dallas, of all places.
Two states split Lake Texoma's water rights—and its name—50/50.
Lake Texoma takes its name from its location on the border between two states: Texas and Oklahoma. There are fifty or so "portmanteau" towns on the national map named for the two states they straddle, from Vershire, Vermont (and New Hampshire) all the way to Monida, Montana (and Idaho). A few places are even named for the three states that meet there, like the Delmarva Peninsula (Delaware-Maryland-Virginia), Texarkana (Texas-Arkansas-Louisiana), and Cal-Nev-Ari (California-Nevada-Arizona, population 244).
Manpower turned a Texas valley into a beautiful lake.
"Lake" Texoma is actually the 14th largest reservoir in the United States. It was once part of the Red River Valley, made famous in the Marty Robbins cowboy ballad, but in the 1930s, powerful congressman (and future Speaker of the House) Sam Rayburn got the funding for the Army Corps of Engineers to build a dam there for hydroelectric power and flood control. The three-mile-long Denison Dam was built during World War II—largely by German POWs who had been captured in North Africa—and today the valley is filled with 100 billion cubic feet of water.
Lake Texoma drains just like a bathtub.
Lake Texoma is just an hour north of Dallas, so it's a huge regional tourist destination for boating, fishing, and other summer fun. But June 2015 was a bad time to be boating on the lake. Record rainfall had raised its surface 35 feet, flooding cabins and marinas into a muddy inland sea. Authorities opened spillways in the dam to drain the lake, and the result was exactly what happens when you drain a bathtub: an eight-foot wide vortex appeared spinning counterclockwise above the spillway.
Stay out of the cursed Texoma Triangle, landlubbers!
The vortex lasted for days, large enough to swallow full-sized boats, so concerned lake officials immediately posted signs and buoys to keep visitors from getting sucked down the drain like a rubber duckie. The whirlpool shrank and then disappeared as the lake level lowered, but not before its ominous brown maw made screens and newspapers all over the world. Avast there, jet skiers! 'Tis is a fearsome maelstrom!
Explore the world's oddities every week with Ken Jennings, and check out his book Maphead for more geography trivia.
