Unlike any other lake, if you think about
the location — close to the equator — and look at the picture, you will
realize that there is something strange about the lake. Most large
lakes were formed by glaciers; large lakes close to the equator are
sometimes formed by the damming of a large river. But there is no large
river flowing into Lake Toba. The lake has a different and more
dramatic origin.
Lake Toba marks the site of the largest volcanic eruption in the last 2 million years.
It is, like Yellowstone, a “resurgent caldera”, or as geologists David
Alt and Daniel Hyndman call this type of volcano, a “perfect horror”.
Alt and Hyndman call resurgent calderas “perfect horrors” because they
are both violent and enormous.The size of Lake Toba may be a little difficult to grasp from the picture, so to give you some comparisons.
In Washington state, if the lake were aligned north to south in the Puget Sound area, it would stretch from Everett to Tacoma. In the Chicago area, it would stretch from Waukegan to Gary. In New York, it would stretch from West Point to the Statue of Liberty. This is one enormous volcano.
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