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| Lake On the Run |
 Boating on the lake is a relaxing way to spend the time but not if your lake disappears. The Cachet Lake, in souther Chile, did just that recently. Luckily, no injuries were reported after the lake suddenly swelled up and then emptied, resulting in what was described as a "tsunami" being sent down a nearby river.
The Colonia glacier is melting, glacier scientist Gino Gasassa says, because of global warming. The run off from this melting has filled Cachet Lake and increased pressure on its ice sheet. This caused water to bore a 5 mile tunnel through the glacier into the Baker River on April 6.
"The remarkable thing is that the mass of water moved against the current of the river," Casassa told the Associated Press. "It was a real river tsunami."
"This is a phenomenon that occurs periodically during the summer seasons, caused by the melting of large masses of ice that swell some lakes," Casassa continued. "The basic cause is global warming." Casassa noted that temperatures in the area were unusually high during the recent Southern Hemisphere summer.
The lake had nearly refilled again three days later.
This is not the first lake to disappear in South America in the recent past. Tempano lake in Chile disappeared last year and has only recovered some of its total volume.
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