Devil's Kettle Falls: Where Does Half of the Water Go?

The Devil's Kettle Falls has been a perplexing natural phenomenon for a long time because it appears to swallow half the amount of water that cascades down the slopes.

Devil's Kettle Falls in Minnesota

Hikers and geologists have been baffled by Minnesota's Devil's Kettle Falls for ages.

A river splits at a rock outcropping near the falls on the north side of Lake Superior. The other side goes into a deep pit and continues as a normal waterfall, but one side tumbles over a two-step stone embankment and carries on-apparently forever.

In Judge CR Magney State Park, close to Grand Marais, Minnesota, the falls are located on the Brule River, about a mile inland from Lake Superior.

The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources claimed that the river divides in two at an occurrence of rhyolite, a volcanic rock that is as hard as granite.

Typical of a waterfall, the river's east bank plunges 50 feet into a pool.

Where Does Half The Water Go?

The water on the west side disappears into a rock crevice. People have been throwing sticks into the area, but they have just seen them fall into the pit and remain there.

According to park manager Peter Mott, this enigma has long fostered rumors about where the water disappears.

The likelihood that this water forks at the waterfall and goes in two different directions-some into Canada and some back into the Mississippi River-has been suggested by locals, according to Mott.

However, the most widely accepted idea holds that the water travels through the ground before emerging someplace beneath Lake Superior.

There are numerous accounts of visitors trying to trace the flow of water through the kettle with anything from ping pong balls to various dyes to GPS trackers as some sort of markings.

They waited for it to emerge at the bottom, but they were never able to locate their markings.

Mystery Solved

Hydrologists who were surveying the area in the fall of 2017 dropped a vegetable-based dye into the pothole to mark the location of the water escape.

It is simple to identify this fluorescent, biodegradable dye at 10 parts per billion, and the "blender effect" wouldn't harm the liquid.

Jeff Green, the DNR mapping hydrologist in charge of this study, concluded that the water simply rejoins the main river and doesn't mysteriously disappear down to the earth's core.

Fluid Dynamics

According to the DNR, fluid dynamics provides an explanation for why individuals fail to notice the stick they throw into the river at the top being dragged down the falls.

The plunge pool beneath the kettle is a surprisingly potent system of recirculating currents, according to Calvin Alexander, a colleague at the University of Minnesota, capable of dissolving stuff and retaining it under water until it resurfaces somewhere downstream.

The dye that is used to track the water's course won't work like that, he continued. The color molecules were not contained in Devil's Kettle, in contrast to larger items.