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LIKE MOST BODIES of water, Siberia’s Lake Burlinskoye spends much of the year on the cool side of the colour wheel: tasteful blue, murky gray.
Once a summer, though, the lake lets loose and turns a bright, flamingo pink.
As the Siberian Times reports, this year’s transformation is currently in full swing. Photos show excited swimmers wading through what looks like a massive basin of powder-made lemonade, stretching towards the horizon. Small waves roll ashore in varying shades, as though someone gave the lake a pink ombre dye-job.
As with other, more famous pink lakes, Burlinskoye is extremely salty. It gets its seasonal blush from an overload of artemia salina, a tiny, salt-loving brine shrimp. (This shrimp is almost as odd as its home – it has three eyes and eleven pairs of legs, and swims with its feet pointed up.)
Normally, it takes until late August for the pinkening to occur. But as the Siberian Times explains, this year’s unusually hot weather has given the lake an early sunburn -the video above is from way back in June.
While this particular climate change symptom is less terrifying than, say, unfrozen reindeer anthrax, it’s a good visual reminder – when even the water is flushed, you know it’s hot.
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