A 70-by-140-meter piece of forest broke free from the shore and began drifting on its own across Williston Lake, in northern British Columbia.
Boaters saw it first. Rocky Avery photographed it and uploaded it to Facebook, and by July 21, BC Hydro satellites had confirmed that it was not a hoax: there was a real floating island, covered in trees, the size of an American football field. Bob Gammer, a BC Hydro spokesperson, admitted that they initially had doubts—these days, any strange image is suspected of being AI-generated. The explanation turned out to be simpler: a winter with heavy snowfall and a rainy summer brought the reservoir to its highest level in 14 years, and the water eventually tore away an entire fragment of land.
By August 5, the island had disappeared from satellite images. No one could find it. Until, on August 31, it reappeared in the Ospika River, and days later BC Hydro confirmed that it had drifted 30 kilometers northwest, pushed not by the current but by the wind, until it ran aground on another shore.