A lake in Russia disappeared:

“I’ve never seen anything like it. Never,” said Dmitry Zaytsev, an officer with the federal Emergency Situations Ministry sent to investigate the case.

“Pretty much all the water went down that hole, and that’s it,” he said. “Everything — fish, water, everything — got sucked into that hole. And judging by the size of the crater, it must have happened pretty quickly, in a matter of a few hours.”

Government officials theorize that a shift in soils underneath the lake opened access to an underground channel that drained the water, estimated from several thousand to more than a million cubic yards, into a subterranean cavern. From there, it may have flowed into the Oka River a few miles away.

“It’s pretty scary to even be here. You have to understand, it was like there was a pump somewhere underground. A gaping sinkhole emerged, and everything was flushed down like a toilet,” said another Emergency Situations Ministry investigator, Vladimir Gryasnov. “If anyone had been near the thing when it happened, they would have had no chance of surviving.”

The channel-to-the-river theory has gained credence during the last week, as several fishermen along the Oka reported catching 35-pound carp. The species has been found in the lake but not the river. At least, not in ordinary times.
But, of course, these are not ordinary times; not when White Lake is there one day and gone the next.