In a year where distractions are being welcomed instead of shoved aside, B.C.’s Okanagan region provided two great, debate-triggering interruptions.
And both revolved around the same subject: Okanagan Lake’s mythical monster, Ogopogo.
Does it exist or is it a figment of what people want to see?
In late August, a minute-long video showing odd waves in the lake near Vernon was sent to Global News.
The video starts with small waves on a mostly serene lake. Seconds in, something black appears in the waves and disappears, then appears again.
It’s impossible to tell what caused the ripples, other than it being black in colour.
Fast forward eight weeks to mid-October and a Calgary resident capturing yet more “weird” waves on the lake.
Adam Schwartz said he was hanging out with family in West Kelowna during the Thanksgiving holiday, and that the lake was serene and calm.
“We were looking out at the water,” Schwartz told Global News. “Then, all of a sudden, we saw this weird formation of waves that were kind of going against the current of what was coming in.”
He said they watched the waves, which were “moving really weird,” for around 30 seconds before recording video for another 30 seconds until the movement stopped.
Schwartz said he’s quite familiar with Okanagan Lake, having vacationed in the region many times while growing up, and knows “about the great myth of the Ogopogo.”
Robert Young, an associate professor at UBC Okanagan who studies earth, environmental and geographic sciences, said odd waves are a “natural, physical process other than an eternal living serpentine critter that lives in the lake for millions of years, even through multiple ice ages.”
In an interview with Global News in 2019, Young said the waves are very common and have been described in 34 lakes alone in B.C., and 1,000 worldwide.
“You can go to many parts of the world and they all have their own lake monster,” Young said. “In Michigan, Newfoundland … and all over the world, Loch Ness as well.
“Funny thing, though, Ogopogo was described seven years before the Loch Ness monster.”
In describing the waves, Young said people generally don’t know that lakes will “overturn” as the season goes by.
The body of water undergoes thermal stratification, where different layers of water temperatures and densities will suddenly shift, creating waves at the surface.
Water is most dense at 4 C, and becomes less dense on either side of that temperature. The water layering happens when there’s no wind to mix it.
“So you can get the shearing of one lake layer past the other,” said Young, “and at that shear zone, you can form these sorts of waves.”