Mike Conley's Tales of the Weird: Water happened to national park's lake?

Last week, this column took a look at the weird disappearance of evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson, who was missing for about a month back in the summer of 1926. Eighty-four years later, people still wonder what really happened to her.
But can an entire lake vanish almost overnight? Apparently, that very thing happened only three years ago in a remote section of Chile and scientists and researchers are still trying to find out why.
The Bernardo O'Higgins National Park is located in the southern Andes Mountains of Chile. It is that South American country's largest protected area and contains numerous high mountains and glaciers. Due to its rugged geography and remoteness, few tourists venture into the area. It can only be reached by boat or helicopter.
Inside this national park, a five-acre glacial lake once existed. Rangers at Bernardo O'Higgins National Park last saw the lake in March 2007. When they returned to the site just two months later, they were shocked by what they found.
The entire lake was gone. All of the water and its contents were missing. Instead, the rangers found a 100-feet-deep crater in late May where the lake previously existed. They found only a few large pieces of ice that used to float atop the water, according to the story by the Associated Press.
"The lake had simply disappeared," said Juan Jose Romero, head of Chile's National Forest Service for that region. "No one knows what happened."
In addition, the river that once flowed out of the lake was reduced to a small stream.
A group of geologists and other experts were sent to the area to investigate and find out what made the lake vanish. One theory holds that the water disappeared through cracks in the lake bottom into underground fissures. But experts cannot explain why any cracks would have appeared because no earthquakes were reported in the area prior to the lake's disappearance, Romero told the AP.
In July 2007, scientists announced they were able to come to the conclusion that the disappearance occurred as a result of climate change.
Maybe. As word about this weird incident spread across the Internet, UFO enthusiasts and paranormal experts started putting forth alternative theories as to how this could have happened.
Andres Rivera, an expert on glaciers, explained to a Chilean newspaper that the lake itself did not even exist 30 years ago. He feels the landscape in the national park is changing on its own, without any help from supposed climate change.
Some researchers believe UFOs drained the water in the lake. There have been tales of UFOs taking water out of lakes and ponds but nothing of this size has been reportedly taken before.
It seems that scientists and paranormal researchers will continue to speculate about what happened to the missing glacier lake in Chile.
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In San Diego, some people who were ringing in the new year of 2010 were startled to see UFOs in the night sky.
Shortly after midnight on Friday, Jan. 1, the phones started ringing off the hook at one of San Diego's TV stations. One caller after another claimed to have seen three red lights in the sky, according to a Web site.
"This is going to sound crazy," one caller told the station. "But I didn't know who else to call. There's a UFO we've been watching hover in the sky."
This person and the other callers described a triangle of red lights that were moving together in the night sky and blinking out. This description sounded similar to other supposed UFOs that actually turned out to be Chinese sky lanterns, small hot-air balloons that are sent aloft by a flame. When the fuel runs out, the lights are extinguished and the balloons fall harmlessly back to earth, according to a Web site.
In any event, these weird lights in the sky gave these people a truly memorable New Year's Day.