The Windgfällweiher is a
reservoir
A reservoir (; ) is an enlarged lake behind a dam, usually built to water storage, store fresh water, often doubling for hydroelectric power generation.
Reservoirs are created by controlling a watercourse that drains an existing body of wa ...
between the
Titisee and the
Schluchsee in the south of
Baden-Württemberg
Baden-Württemberg ( ; ), commonly shortened to BW or BaWü, is a states of Germany, German state () in Southwest Germany, east of the Rhine, which forms the southern part of Germany's western border with France. With more than 11.07 million i ...
,
Germany
Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It lies between the Baltic Sea and the North Sea to the north and the Alps to the south. Its sixteen States of Germany, constituent states have a total popu ...
. It is located within the
High Black Forest and lies in a hollow formed by
ice age
An ice age is a long period of reduction in the temperature of Earth's surface and atmosphere, resulting in the presence or expansion of continental and polar ice sheets and alpine glaciers. Earth's climate alternates between ice ages, and g ...
glaciation between the villages of
Altglashütten,
Falkau and
Aha on the territory of the municipality of
Lenzkirch.
The lake lies in a trough that runs from the
Seebach valley in the northwest to the Schluchsee in the southeast and thus crosses the generally northeastward-running streams in the area. This remnant of a former valley is followed by the
Three Lakes Railway that was built between 1920 and 1926 and by the transfer channel (''Überleitungskanal''), built in 1932 and belonging to the
Schluchseewerk, which takes water from the Seebach valley via the Haslach valley to the Schluchsee Basin.
North of the low-lying
watershed in this trough, between the Haslach in the north and the Ahabach in the south, now drowned by the impounded Schluchsee, the
glacier
A glacier (; or ) is a persistent body of dense ice, a form of rock, that is constantly moving downhill under its own weight. A glacier forms where the accumulation of snow exceeds its ablation over many years, often centuries. It acquires ...
of the
last ice age carved out a basin, in which a small
bog lake formed, the natural precursor to today's reservoir. This was enlarged in 1895 by the former Falkau Screw Works (''Schraubenfabrik Falkau'') with a dam in the north and the water surface raised by about 6 metres. At the same time the lake, which had only hitherto been fed from the east by the Kähnerbächle, was given another inflow in the form of a small
leat (''Hangkanal'') from the southwest. Since 1932 the Windgfällweiher has been incorporated into the transfer of water from the Seebach to the Schluchsee (covered leat) and drained since then in the opposite direction i.e. to the south. The water is led via a ditch over the low watershed, initially as the ''Windgefällbach'' and later, the ''Schwarzach'', into the Schluchsee.
Since 1950 the lake has been protected. In 2002 an angling and fish consumption ban was announced, because
PCB had been discovered in the sediment depositions on the bottom of the lake.
On the wooded eastern shore of the Windgfällweiher, a lake barely touched by the streams of visitors to the area, lies a rather less picturesque bathing beach with a listed building.
The Windgfällweiher, together with the Schluchsee and
Titisee, contributed to the name of the
Three Lakes Railway.
Windgfaellweiher 5929.jpg, View of the bathing area
Windgfaellweiher im Winter.jpg, The Windgfällweiher in winter
See also
*
List of lakes in Germany
References
External links
{{DEFAULTSORT:Windgfallweiher
Lakes of Baden-Württemberg
Lakes of the Black Forest
LWindgfallweiher