The Chileans have rather carelessly mislaid an entire lake in the Magallanes region of Patagonia, Reuters reports.

The body of water in question (seen here before and after) had a surface area of around 4 to 5 hectares (10-12 acres) or, if you prefer, roughly 10 soccer pitches*. It was last seen in March, according to Juan Jose Romero, regional director of Chile's National Forestry Corporation CONAF, but when he popped back in May "to our surprise we found the lake had completely disappeared".

Romero elaborated: "The only things left were chunks of ice on the dry lake-bed and an enormous fissure."

The theory is that an earth tremor opened the crack and the lake simply went down the plughole. Southern Chile has this year enjoyed thousands of minor earth tremors, Reuters notes.

Bootnote

*That makes the volume, by our reckoning, the equivalent of around 22.3 million EU regulation standard-sized grapefruit - enough water to boil 1,116,000 supersized "Peruvian Breed" guinea pigs.

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