We've had 3 times more rain than usual for the month of May.
There's a culvert under the road that had developed a leak and the water sucked all the soil down stream causing a cavity which then collapsed.
My daughter lives just a mile away and took the top photo, I took the bottom photo.
Bloody hell! I'm not going to argue Bert - yours are definitely bigger than ours! Wow.
ReplyDeleteditto
ReplyDeleteHey Bert, in Christchurch we have bigger potholes than that lol
ReplyDeleteActually, there is an even bigger pothole in Minnesota, so big it filled with water and now it's called Lake Superior.
ReplyDeletemouse -
sunny -
Can you imagine it that had happened at night... some would have driven into it.. or if a school bus was driving over it. Good thing it happened with nobody around.
Iriani - Ok, I suspect your potholes are very long and narrow?
I HAD the exact same thing happen at my farm... a bridge/culvert connecting the E 40 with the W 80, A hole in the culvert undermined the road and it created the same sort of hole but quite a bit smaller (2 feet across).
well PA has a lot of potholes but ya got us there-not that big yikes that could swallow up something
ReplyDeleteWe had one like that, but not nearly so wide, when the electric company punched through the top of a storm drain running under our property while replacing a power pole. It took Southern California Edison and the L.A. County of Public Works three days to argue through who was going to fix the drain & fill the hole up, and who would pay for it. God, how I love easements.
ReplyDeletethats a sink hole, the water main broke and washed away the road layers.................
ReplyDelete@Bert. Lake Superior a big pothole? It is to laugh. We in South California have the Pacific Ocean.
ReplyDeleteOh goodness , thank heavens no one drove into it ! living in the neighboring state of Iowa we keep telling you guys you have to feed the potholes other wise the become man-eating . This of course is another way to create jobs pot hole hunting . very strange folks stay far far away from them .
ReplyDeleteProof that our machinations are but seconds away from disappearing from the planet.
ReplyDeleteLong and narrow? What are you thinking of Bert? Our potholes are very randomised, up, down and sideways? And not just confined to roads - many of them are under buildings!
ReplyDeletepothole fishing made easy
ReplyDeletehttp://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150389339463677.440782.805278676&type=3
Technically, this isn't a pothole, or even a sinkhole ... it's probably best referred to as a washout since the dirt was removed by erosion caused by a surface water source.
ReplyDeletePotholes are in roads and created from above, by car tires.
Sinkholes are usually caused by underground rivers or water dissolving the minerals in the soil causing the earth above it to collapse.
This hole is actually above surrounding ground level, a built-up man-made roadway over a gully with a small surface stream that goes thru the culvert. With our extreme rainfall, the roadway acted like a dam since the water couldn't flow thru the culvert fast enough. Usually the water level would not reach the hole in the culvert and would not have had the speed, force and pressure of the water that caused the erosion, otherwise this would have happened sooner.
renee - In MN, the farther north you go, the bigger the potholes.
willy - Ok, you win, ocean is bigger than Lake Superior. (An unfortunate easement you have).
Unsupervised - Close... not a water main, but a stream going thru a culvert that had a hole in it.
ranky - Yes, it's so lucky that the nearby neighbor came out to investigate. Certainly, someone would have driven into it.
yeta - You are so right...... good thing the entire planet didn't get sucked down that hole and vanish.
iriani - I thought maybe you were referring to cracks in the earth caused by earthquakes? We do have gigantic monstorous sinkholes in the USA , some in nearly every state, but the BIG ones are mostly in the southeastern states where there's more limestone.
GOOD - It wouldn't let me look at the link (temporarily unavailable).. will try later... but I suppose you'd have just as good of luck fishing in the hole as you would fishing in the creek.
That be one BIG pothole!!!!!!!!!! I'll keep this in mind next time I am inclined to complain about the roads around here.
ReplyDeleteNever seen them this big on a paved road, but there is a country township road near here that completely gave way two springs ago, when a six-foot culvert washed out. a friend of mine was standing on the road and thought he heard thunder and it was the road, he and his cousin and the cousin's kid got back to the side of the road their pickup was on just in time. It's about a 25 ft drop and water was rushing through like you wouldn't believe.
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