Why a lake spotted on flight to Kelowna is bright yellow

Kelowna resident Jasmine Korcok saw a bright yellow lake in the mountains on a commercial flight from Vancouver to Kelowna last month and was able to snap a clear photo of it.

The colour of the lake appears vibrant against the hilly backdrop, bordered by white and sitting in a dip in the landscape. 

“It as toward the end of my flight and I happened to look out the window and saw this bright yellow lake and was surprised,” she said. “I took the photo because I was hoping it would give me a location tag but it didn’t. I didn’t know where we were, there wasn’t anything recognizable around, but I’m guessing we were over the Nicola Valley or maybe the North Okanagan.”

Korcok is a chemistry professor at Okanagan College.

“As a chemist there are not a whole lot of minerals that are that colour,” she said. “It could be an iron compound, but it might be due to the interaction with the alga or bacteria that’s making it yellow.”

While the lake cannot be properly identified without coordinates, iNFOnews.ca reached out to the BC Lake Stewardship Society to find out what makes it so yellow.

“The lake in the photo appears to be in a higher elevation, low precipitation environment and has no obvious outflow streams or minimal outflow,” said society board member Rick Nordin in an emailed statement issued Sept. 19. “Small lakes like this are considered ‘terminal’ and the water inflow and water level vary with annual precipitation.

“Most of the inflow water to the lake would be in the spring with snow melt. With the water level decreasing over the summer with evaporation, minerals in the water become more concentrated and typically precipitate out of the solution as they reach saturation. This usually results in a white precipitate covering the bottom of the lake.”

Nordin pointed to Spotted Lake near Osoyoos as a well-known example of a concentrated mineral lake, or saline lake, and said there are similar saline lakes in the Kamloops area.

Saline lakes are landlocked bodies of water with high concentrations of salts and dissolved minerals, often found in arid regions.

While these lakes are typically white in colour, some saline lakes like Spotted Lake and the lake seen from the plane take on different colours due to algal blooms.

“That would be the most likely explanation for the unusual colour,” Nordin said. “It has been an exceptional year with a variety of unusual events associated with lakes in BC, possibly due to climate change.”

Located in the South Okanagan Grasslands Protected Area on Highway 3 west of Osoyoos, Spotted Lake is a popular place for tourists to stop at in the summer when concentrations of minerals create visible spots on the lake that shift in size and colour as evaporation continues.

Nordin is a retired government scientist for lakes and water quality issues and a retired university professor. 

The BC Lake Stewardship Society works to ensure the preservation and protection of lakes in the province, collaborating with scientists, environmentalist, First Nations and other stakeholders through stewardship groups located in various regions including the Thompson-Nicola, Okanagan and Columbia-Shuswap.