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By Anna Skinner
Associate News Editor
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An unlikely item has become a well-known marker of Lake Mead water levels as the reservoir continues to rise.
After years of drought, Lake Mead, which is in Nevada and Arizona, reached drastically low levels last summer, but water levels have since started to recover because of above-average precipitation and snowpack that melted throughout the summer. A shipwrecked speedboat in Government Wash, a designated undeveloped camping area at Lake Mead, has often been used as a symbol to document Lake Mead's water levels in times of drought.
Last Tuesday, a video of the boat was shared across social media to depict Lake Mead's rising levels.
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As of Monday morning, Lake Mead's water level was just over 1,066 feet, a more than 20-foot increase since this time last year. Scientific measurements are used to document the water level, which is shared on the website Lakes Online daily, but the lake's visitors often use a shipwrecked speedboat to mark the change.
On September 5, the boat was almost completely submerged.
"Update: the world famous Lake Mead Speedboat is 99% submerged," social media account Las Vegas Locally shared on X, formerly Twitter.
A video showing just the tip of the shipwrecked boat peeking out above the water accompanied the tweet. The video has been viewed 30,000 times as of Monday.
Social media user Sean DeFrank shot the video and narrated it. DeFrank said that someone had added a pole to the end of the boat to mark it in case the water continued to rise. He noted that last year, the boat was stranded on dry land several feet from the water's edge.
"Incredibly, that boat is about a foot and a half away from being completely submerged once again," DeFrank said.
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DeFrank added that normally he photographs the boat from a different angle, but he can no longer access that land without entering the lake because of the rising levels.
"Another week or so we probably won't even see it except for this pole on the end," he said.
Newsweek reached out to the Lake Mead National Recreation Area by email for comment.
Last Sunday, Las Vegas Locally shared an old video of the boat when it was marooned out of the water. In the video, the dirty boat is sticking nearly straight up out of the ground. After showing the boat, the video panned and showed the water level several feet away.
"Lake Mead on September 3rd, 2022. This boat is nearly covered by water now," the account posted.
The video has been viewed 1.6 million times as of Monday.
Submerged items like shipwrecked boats, trees or rocks pose underwater hazards, especially when water levels are not high enough to ensure safe passage over the object. Man-made reservoirs are formed by inundating an area with water, and all of the structures that previously existed remain beneath the surface.
This month, some residents feared that the historic town of Sparta in Texas would be revealed by severe drought at Lake Belton.
In July, hazards were exposed at Lake Travis as the Texas reservoir battled severe drought. Exposed hazards included a concrete plant, houses, docks and a pecan grove where the trees stand as high as 100 feet.
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