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Badwater
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Badwater is a basin in California's Death Valley, noted as the lowest point in North America, with an elevation of 282 feet (85.5 m) below sea level.
The site itself consists of a small spring-fed pool of water next to the road; however, the accumulated salts of the surrounding basin make it undrinkable, thus the name "Badwater". The pool does have animal and plant life, including pickleweed, aquatic insects, and the Badwater snail.
Adjacent to the pool, where water is not always present at the surface, repeated freeze-thaw and evaporation cycles gradually pushed the thin salt crust into curiously hexagonal honeycomb shape.
The pool itself is not actually the lowest point of the basin, which is several miles to the west and varies in position. However, the salt flats are hazardous to traverse (in many cases being only a thin white crust over mud), and so the sign is at the pool.
Geography At Badwater, significant rainstorms flood the valley bottom periodically, covering the salt pan with a thin sheet of standing water. Each newly-formed lake doesn't last long though, because the 1.9 inch average rainfall is overwhelmed by a 150-inch annual evaporation rate. This, the United States' greatest evaporation potential, means that even a 12-foot-deep, 30-mile-long lake would dry up in a single year. While flooded, some of the salt is dissolved, then is redeposited as clean, sparkling crystals when the water evaporates.
History Not long ago, during the Holocene (about 2000-4000 years ago), the climate was quite a bit wetter than today. So wet that streams running from nearby mountains gradually filled Death Valley to a depth of almost 30 feet. Some of the minerals left behind by earlier Death Valley lakes dissolved in the shallow water, creating a briny solution.
The wet times didn't last. The climate warmed and rainfall declined. The lake began to dry up. Minerals dissolved in the lake became increasingly concentrated as water evaporated. Eventually, only a briny soup remained, forming salty pools on the lowest parts of Death Valley's floor. Salts (95% table salt - NaCl) began to crystallize, coating the surface with a thick crust about three to five feet thick.
Other Badwater is the starting point of the Badwater Ultramarathon, which ends high on Mount Whitney (the highest point in the Continental United States), 85 miles (137 kilometers) to the west.
See also Death Valley
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