Manoel Dixon had just finished dinner one night last May when a phone dinged nearby with a Facebook message.<\/p>\n
Dixon, 26, was at his family\u2019s hunting camp near their northern Quebec<\/a> home town of Waswanipi. They knew the fellow hunter who was messaging Dixon\u2019s father, but what he wrote didn\u2019t make sense.<\/p>\n \u201cHe said: \u2018Lake Rouge is gone,\u2019\u201d Dixon said.<\/p>\n Lake Rouge was a calm lake nearby with trout, sandy banks and a surface area of about 3 sq km. By \u201cgone\u201d, they weren\u2019t sure what the man was getting at.<\/p>\n Dixon and his parents got their first glimpse as they walked up a logging road the next day. All the water of Lake Rouge had, in fact, vanished. Eagles and crows soon began to circle over the mud and dead fish that remained.<\/p>\n He said his father \u201cwas quiet\u201d when he first saw it, but then<\/p>\n started narrating a rush of memories \u2013 the lake\u2019s \u201creally clear water\u201d, and how moose gravitated there.<\/p>\n A massive mud plain cutting north-east made it clear where the water had gone. It had travelled almost 10km overland into a bigger lake. Amazingly, no one had been hurt in this gigantic \u2013 was it a mudslide? A flood? Nobody was sure what to call it.<\/p>\n Map<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cI was devastated,\u201d said Chief Irene Neeposh of Waswanipi, an Indigenous Cree community. She called an emergency meeting, though she wasn\u2019t sure who to invite.<\/p>\n \u201cCall me if you have a lake that drains, right?\u201d she said. \u201cNobody knows what to do in this type of situation.\u201d<\/p>\n There is a name for this kind of sudden drainage of a lake \u2013 an outburst flood \u2013 but in recorded history these have usually happened at glacial lakes, when the underlying ice cracks, or at manmade reservoirs when the dam fails.<\/p>\n Half a dozen international experts in the field told the Guardian they had never heard before of an outburst flood from a natural, non-glacial lake. Lake Rouge did not even empty through its normal drainage paths but cut a new outflow spot, an \u201cabsolutely amazing\u201d case to see, said Diana Vieira, a scientist at the Joint Research Centre at the European Commission.<\/p>\n The tougher question is: was this a freak natural event? Or was it human-caused? It can be impossible to untangle this mystery for a single extraordinary event, experts say, but the detective work is still important as they try to anticipate other surreal mass movements of water around the world.<\/p>\n Natural geology was key to Lake Rouge\u2019s demise. The lake was elevated and its banks were relatively soft with a pre-existing weak spot. The year\u2019s snowfall and speed of spring melt were also reportedly both high. But some scientists and Cree elders say you must zoom out on the whole region\u2019s history to really study the flood.<\/p>\n Lac Rouge slider image<\/a><\/p>\n Two rounds of wildfire torched Quebec forests in the last six years, including the mammoth 2023 fire that ate through a square mileage the size of mainland Denmark.<\/p>\n \u201cUnfortunately, these two successive major fires removed most of the mature vegetation cover [around] inflowing lakes and rivers directly leading to Lake Rouge,\u201d concluded a report by the Quebec Cree forestry department. The spot where the shoreline broke was also burned.<\/p>\n But in the even bigger picture, northern Quebec, including the Waswanipi region, has been heavily logged for decades. Logging companies are also often invited after wildfires to salvage wood at a discount.<\/p>\n \u201cYou know, there\u2019s about 6ft, 7ft of snow\u201d in the area\u2019s typical winter, said Paul Dixon, a 68-year-old distant cousin to Manoel Dixon.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen the forests were there, it would take three months to melt\u201d under the shade, he said. \u201cNow, you have the same amount of snow that melts in one month. That\u2019s like putting a block of ice in a microwave oven.\u201d<\/p>\n Lake Rouge\u2019s muddy banks have gradually \u201cweakened because there\u2019s no cover\u201d, said local elder and forestry expert Allan Saganash.<\/p>\n All soil can withstand pressure from the water it holds, up to a point, experts said.<\/p>\n A coniferous forest normally absorbs about half the rain or snowfall in various ways. Without it, the excess reaches the groundwater, which feeds lakes and rivers and can oversaturate their banks.<\/p>\n \u201cAny disturbance on the land \u2013 wildfire, clearcut, logging, whatever \u2026 causes the groundwater table to move up to higher elevation\u201d more often and for longer, said Younes Alila, a University of British Columbia hydrologist. \u201cInstead of just one day, maybe several days. Instead of one week, maybe a couple of weeks.\u201d<\/p>\n Each time, the soaked soil loses strength, he said. \u201cThe soil starts to break. But where [is it] going to break first? On the banks of lakes and the banks of rivers.\u201d<\/p>\n On top of this, wildfire can make soil water-repellent for a few years, increasing runoff. And logging companies often \u201cscarify\u201d the ground after they log, essentially breaking up roots and dirt for replanting. This happened in one corner of Lake Rouge\u2019s catchment area.<\/p>\n \u201cIt feels like you\u2019re in \u2026 fields of corn,\u201d said Nicolas Mainville, a biologist at Snap Quebec, an environmental nonprofit, who visited Lake Rouge after it drained. \u201cBut it used to be a forest.\u201d<\/p>\n The Quebec government concluded Lake Rouge\u2019s disappearance was natural and has not studied it. It also said that according to a study its forestry department commissioned in 2004, if half or less of the forest in a given watershed is disturbed by logging or wildfire, there will be only a \u201cnegligible\u201d chance that waterways will be altered by high peak flows.<\/p>\n Two Waswanipi residents in Lake Rouge after it suddenly drained. Photograph: Chief Irene Neeposh<\/p>\n As scientists began to chatter about Lake Rouge, a single similar case came to light. A small lake 200km away had drained in under three hours in 1974<\/a>. A sandy esker lay between that lake and a bigger one, and a fisher had dragged his boot through the sand, not expecting the whole lake to flow out.<\/p>\n