For the second time in 12 years, the Glory Hole at Lake Berryessa is spilling over. It's good news for the Bay Area's lakes and reservoirs, but bad news for one wayward duck. Around a. Tuesday morning, a video showing a lone duck slipping into the Glory Hole was posted to a Solano County community Facebook group. The people demanded to know: What happened to the Glory Hole duck? First, a little context — the Glory Hole is Lake Berryessa's unconventional spillway.

Some say it looks like a toilet being flushed; in more generous interpretations, it is a beautiful inverted fountain. In a rare occurrence, the water level in the Lake Berryessa reservoir, 75 miles north of San Francisco, has risen so much that it is pouring into a ft-deep circular pipe constructed in its corner. The 72ft diameter pipe, known as Morning Glory Spillway, or simply Glory Hole, takes in water like a drain, once the reservoir is filled over capacity, and shoots it into a creek below the Monticello Dam. Northern California has seen heavy precipitation for weeks. Thousands of people have been evacuated from their homes due to risks of floods near the town of Guerneville, and highways around the region have been shut down because of the downpours.

The only recorded Berryessa spillway death is that of swimmer Emily Schwalek, 41, of Davis who was killed in when she was sucked down the Monticello Dam at Lake Berryessa spillway. Measuring at approximately 72 feet wide and feet long, the spillway is known as the Glory Hole. It routes excess water from the lake into a 72 foot diameter entrance structure known as the Glory Hole down to a foot-wide exit pipe.

Follow our live coverage for the latest news on the coronavirus pandemic. The massive Morning Glory Spillway in the Lake Berryessa reservoir in northern California was originally designed to funnel away water after unusually big storms, and was only expected to flow a couple of times per century when heavy rains filled the lake to capacity. But recent dramatic video and photographs show the circular spillway, known by locals more colourfully as the "glory hole", flowing for the second time in two years, after the brimming lake became too big for its banks.