88 | 100 It couldn't be colder!
Foto Koch is celebrating 100 years and we are telling YOUR best stories, because without you we wouldn't be here. Today's story is about the coldest lake in Germany: the Funtensee in Berchtesgadener Land.
Funtensee
Amatus KusicThe Funtensee - colder than cold!
Lake Funtensee is located in the Steinernes Meer, a mountain massif between K?nigssee and the Hochk?nig massif, at an altitude of 1,633m. It is the coldest lake in Germany with an all-time low of 45.9 degrees. Due to its special geological location in a basin, these extreme temperatures sometimes prevail here in the winter months. The extremes of cold can be explained by the location of the lake, which is surrounded by mountains and lies at the bottom of a basin. In winter, the rays of the low sun hardly ever reach the bottom of the mountain basin. On clear nights, the residual heat radiates away. As the cold air cannot flow out of the basin, a lake of cold air forms.
A special phenomenon
These temperatures only apply around the Funtensee, as it is up to 20? warmer at the K?rlingerhaus, just a few meters higher up. Quite astonishing: there is a forest boundary downwards at Funtensee, not upwards! The trees get smaller with every meter towards the lake. There is practically no vegetation at the bottom of Funtensee. The depression in which the Funtensee lies was formed over a long period of time by karst erosion processes and subsequent reshaping. Dolines formed by carbonic acid weathering were carved even deeper by a glacier up to 350 m thick during the last ice age. After melting, the glacier left behind ground moraine material that sealed off the drains in the lake's subsoil. The deepest point of Lake Funten is around 5 meters.
