Powerful whirlpools have killed unlucky seafarers, but their power tends to be exaggerated by laymen. Dangers Īn illustration from Jules Verne's essay "Edgard Poë et ses oeuvres" ( Edgar Poe and his Works, 1862) drawn by Frederic Lix or Yan' Dargent. The Army Corps of Engineers, which operates the dam and lake, expected that the whirlpool would last until the lake reached normal seasonal levels by late July. At the time of the whirlpool's formation, the lake was being drained after reaching its highest level ever. Ī more recent example of an artificial whirlpool that received significant media coverage occurred during early June 2015, when an intake vortex formed in Lake Texoma, on the Oklahoma–Texas border, near the floodgates of the dam that forms the lake. Nine of the barges, which had sunk, later resurfaced after the whirlpool subsided. A crater 0.5 miles (0.8 km) across was left behind. The adjacent settlement of Jefferson Island was reduced in area by 10%. This mishap resulted in the destruction of five houses, loss of nineteen barges and eight tug boats, oil rigs, a mobile home, trees, acres of land, and most of a botanical garden. The lake then drained into the mine until the mine filled and the water levels equalized, but the formerly 10-foot (3.0 m) deep lake was now 1,300 feet (400 m) deep. This was not a naturally occurring whirlpool, but a disaster caused by underwater drillers breaking through the roof of a salt mine. Ī short-lived whirlpool sucked in a portion of the 1,300-acre (530 ha) Lake Peigneur in Louisiana, United States after a drilling mishap on November 20, 1980. During 2000 a whirlpool there caught student divers, resulting in fatalities. įrench Pass ( Te Aumiti) is a narrow and treacherous stretch of water that separates D'Urville Island from the north end of the South Island of New Zealand. Skookumchuck Narrows is a tidal rapids that develops whirlpools, on the Sunshine Coast, Canada with current speeds exceeding 30 km/h (19 mph). The Naruto whirlpools are located in the Naruto Strait near Awaji Island in Japan, which have speeds of 26 km/h (16 mph). The smaller whirlpools around this Old Sow are known as "Piglets".
MYTHBUSTERS SEASON 11 COMPLETE TORRENT FULL
It is given the epithet "pig-like" as it makes a screeching noise when the vortex is at its full fury and reaches speeds of as much as 27.6 km/h (17.1 mph). Old Sow whirlpool is located between Deer Island, New Brunswick, Canada, and Moose Island, Eastport, Maine, USA. The mannequin was swallowed and spat up far down current with a depth gauge reading of 262 m (860 ft) with evidence of being dragged along the bottom for a great distance. Ī documentary team from Scottish independent producers Northlight Productions once threw a mannequin into the Corryvreckan ("the Hag") with a life jacket and depth gauge. Though it was classified initially as non-navigable by the Royal Navy it was later categorized as "extremely dangerous". Flood tides and inflow from the Firth of Lorne to the west can drive the waters of Corryvreckan to waves of more than 9 metres (30 ft), and the roar of the resulting maelstrom, which reaches speeds of 18 km/h (11 mph), can be heard 16 km (10 mi) away. It is the third-largest whirlpool in the world. The Corryvreckan is a narrow strait between the islands of Jura and Scarba, in Argyll and Bute, on the northern side of the Gulf of Corryvreckan, Scotland. Poe described this phenomenon in his short story A Descent into the Maelstrom, which during 1841 was the first to use the word "maelstrom" in the English language in this story related to the Lofoten Maelstrom, two fishermen are swallowed by the maelstrom while one survives. The fictional depictions of the Maelstrom by Edgar Allan Poe, Jules Verne, and Cixin Liu describe it as a gigantic circular vortex that reaches the bottom of the ocean, when in fact it is a set of currents and crosscurrents with a rate of 18 km/h (11 mph). The Moskstraumen is formed by the combination of powerful semi-diurnal tides and the unusual shape of the seabed, with a shallow ridge between the Moskenesøya and Værøy islands which amplifies and whirls the tidal currents. This is supposedly the whirlpool depicted in Olaus Magnus' map, labeled as "Horrenda Caribdis" ( Charybdis). It is the second strongest whirlpool in the world with flow currents reaching speeds as high as 32 km/h (20 mph). Moskstraumen or Moske-stroom is an unusual system of whirlpools in the open seas in the Lofoten Islands off the Norwegian coast.