A Big, Scary Whirlpool Forms In Lake Texoma

On Lake Texoma along the Texas-Oklahoma border, boaters have to be very careful or they could wind up going down the drain--literally.

That's because a giant vortex measuring eight feet across formed recently in the overflowing lake. The swirling waters got going when engineers opened the floodgates of the Denison Dam to drain the lake, which was flooded from four weeks of heavy rain.

A video of the vortex (above) posted to the YouTube page of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' Tulsa District on June 5, 2015 shows just how big the vortex is--and how powerful. Officials warned in the video's description that it's capable of sucking in a full-sized boat.

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The vortex that formed at Lake Texoma.

“I always compare it to when you fill up your bathtub and then pull the plug. When the water level gets low enough, you’ll see an apparent vortex,” B.J. Parkey, assistant project manager at the lake, told ABC News. “Obviously we don’t have a plug like that in the dam, but the concept is the same."

The Weather Channel reported that officials plan to keep the floodgates open for now and the lake should reach normal levels by the end of July.

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