Lakes here in N. FL have this odd habit of sometimes dissapearing
suddenly. It happens when a sinkhole opens and all the water drains
into it. There are three large well known fishing lakes here, Lake
Jackson, Iamonia and Miccosukee that seem to do this every 20 years or
so. It is Lake Miccosukee's turn this year. A sink opened up on the
south end in the middle of the surrounding swamp and the lake water is
rapidly draining into it.
We (us cavers) went out yesterday to look it over and see if maybe
there might be some exposed cave. A short walk thru some very snakey
cypress swamp and we could hear a rare Florida waterfall and soon came
to a sink about 100' diameter with trees down in it. Some of the
trees had fallen straight down but remained upright. It was about 15'
from the top to water level in the sink and it appeared it had
happened suddenly. A large amount of water was flowing into the sink
without the sink water rising. From the water marks on the
surrounding trees, it looked as if the water had dropped about 1' from
a fairly large swampy lake. We assume the water level will stabilize
in the lake in a few days. It will take a large amount of rain to
bring it back up and then probably a few years of flow to cause the
hole to become stopped up. Then the lake will slowly refill.
Nearby Lake Jackson did this about 15 years ago and took 15 years to
refill. People will forget this happening and then it will happen
again and all those people who bought water front property will be out
of luck for awhile.