Last night I had a dream about a very large lake forming in south central New Mexico. The lake was huge by New Mexico standards taking up a lot of land and was east of a long range of mountains. It was a strange lake in that it was in an area of rolling hills where the water filled in the low areas between the hills causing it to become a lake of islands. I kept looking at the lake from high up and near by puzzling at what had caused it to form and where it was located because I didn't know of land in that part of New Mexico which had rolling hills of that nature and where a lake could form.

After a little bit, two men showed up and began telling me about the lake. The water had gone bad and was getting worse. We even went for a short swim in it to get a closer look. The water wasn't very deep, was warm, and was clear enough to see the bottom. There was also some floating dirt on top of the water which was in funny clumps. We tried using a boat because the water was bad but the boat kept filling up and sinking. Then I woke up.

The dream had me puzzled so I started looking on some topo maps including the Topo USA program. I found a number of areas where land locked lakes with no out flow can form in New Mexico, if the temperatures continue to cool and precipitation continues increasing. The first was in the very center of New Mexico further north than in my dream where there is a low spot locked in by mountains and where there already exist a number of good sized salt lakes. It would be possible for a lake of about 30 miles north to south and 20 miles east to west to form with not too much of a change in weather. It is in an area which is used almost completely for farming and ranching.

A little further to the south was a much smaller circular area just east of the Rio Grande River which would form a lake just a few miles in diameter and is also used for ranching. I also found some sites towards the bottom of the state where anywhere from small to large sized lakes could form with some of them being salty.

But in the spot where the dream occurred, I found a pretty good sized depression which could easily fill and would be a serious problem for the US. Just a few miles west of where I live and on the White Sands Missile Range is a very large depression of from about 65 to 70 miles long north to south and ranging from 5 to about 20 miles wide east to west which I thought drained into the Rio Grande River to the south near El Paso, Texas but doesn't. The only thing which has kept this depression dry has been the extremely high temperatures and dry climate of the desert.

The depression takes up about 1/3 of the missile range and all of the White Sands National Monument and would pose a problem in that there are a number of underground research facilities that would be submerged by such a lake. This area filling up as a lake would force a massive moving of facilities from the area costing a fortune and setting back research as much as years. It is one of the most classified and critical research areas in the world for our government and military.

Interestingly, I realized that they have done considerable research there which almost certainly created toxic waste and would cause the water of a lake to become bad. Adding to this is that the Trinity Site where the first atomic bomb was detonated is in the same area which means that some residual radioactive soil would certainly get into the water making it worse.

Except for the depression, I am fairly familiure with the area and know that the water table in that area is not very far below the surface of the ground. As a mater of fact, there are some salt lakes just to the east of this depression and west of Holloman AFB which regularly fill following rains because the water table raises enough to fill the lakes. These salt lakes have been staying full longer, filling more often, and getting larger. This depression is also almost all large rolling hills just like in the dream and is just east of the Organ Mountains.

Add to this that this has been the coolest year we have had since I moved back here in 1998 and the rain fall last year was the highest in over 100 years with it still being very high this year. It would not take much more cooling and increase in precipitation to cause a lake to form in this depression just like in my dream.

Wow! If the temperatures continue to cool and the precipitation continues to increase, we could have the world's first lake that glows in the dark. :-)