massive sinkhole develops in kansas

Sinkholes are on the rise at an alarming rate worldwide. Samara a Russian city is being eaten up.

Samara eaten alive

To be in denial about this means you are not paying attention. You cannot just search for sinkholes but you have to be region specific to find them. Otherwise you get just the ones we here about on the news.

They are EVERYWHERE.

reply to post by VoidHawk


no the first first picture. the one where the op says there is a person in the background, you can see tall grasses in clumps. do you really expect the surface to sink in one piece and not disrupt anything on top of it? it's silly to think this is an impact crater- where's all the ejecta?

reply to post by AthlonSavage


That is what I was thinking. It looks like a crater more than a sink hole; although have not seem many of each.

It is always hard to fully explain stuff like that but I will give it a shot anyway.

I put my money on it being a small sinkhole that was cause by something cracking the surface during a really dry season.

Originally posted by bottleslingguy
reply to post by VoidHawk

 

no the first first picture. the one where the op says there is a person in the background, you can see tall grasses in clumps. do you really expect the surface to sink in one piece and not disrupt anything on top of it? it's silly to think this is an impact crater- where's all the ejecta?

Hi matey. I wasn't suggesting it was an impact crater, I was just intrigued as to why there's almost no surface remaining.
I agree there would be some mixing, but there's hardly any of the surface left. Personally I would have expected more of it to be on top than underneath. Usually when there's a collapsed the entire area just moves downwards with very little mixing.
Just seems odd to me.

reply to post by VoidHawk


Actually, it makes perfect sense to me.

As the center of the sinkhole collapses, the sides fall down and inward covering the surface material,

Think about an hourglass. As the sand runs into the lower chamber, a dimple will form in the surface of the sand in the upper chamber, this reaches a certain depth based upon like grain size and the angle of slope of the side of the hole.

The same principle applies here; voids collapse, cavern floors give way, subsidence due to a prolonged drop in the water table, any number of things can happen to cause such an event.

Originally posted by bottleslingguy
reply to post by hillbilly4rent

 

isn't that the Ogallala aquifer under Kansas? Opalaka is Fla.

Just depends


You are right, I couldn't edit my first response from my phone and edit time had ran out before I got home. Yes it is ogallala

here's a video

They are saying it's 200 feet across and 90 feet deep wow

reply to post by jadedANDcynical

Yep, that does make sense

Those people that are walking about in that hole For all they know it might decide to collapse some more! How far might it go

Sinkholes do happen, but if there are no oil wells around there no underwater lakes or irrigation for it to cause liguification, or no fracking or fault lines or quakes happening in the area. It does bother to ask how did it happen? Sinkholes do happen but there usually explanations for them, and if its solid ground it does not just fall in one day, just like that unless something is happening or something caused it even if its a natural event. Does not look like it was meteor or any space object hit like some speculated because the area is just to clean for something to leave that big of a hole, and not even singe the grass around it.

Its pretty cool in itself just judging by the pictures, but it would of sucked if somebody was over it when it happened. It would have not been a good day for them. Its going to grow however like they said, this would be a good time to take some before and after pictures of that thing, it may get pretty big eventually.

If I lived near that Kansas sink hole, I would climb down and look for indian relics. Arrowheads and what not. When fishing was off in Colorado, I would walk along the South Park and find arrowheads and glass beads.

Originally posted by groingrinder
If I lived near that Kansas sink hole, I would climb down and look for indian relics. Arrowheads and what not. When fishing was off in Colorado, I would walk along the South Park and find arrowheads and glass beads.

I would be so tempted to do that, but I would be afraid it would collapse on me..

I live in ks a couple hundred miles away, and my wife and I are thinking of driving there to check it out

I'm sure the pics don't do it justice

reply to post by wasobservingquietly


Yessir. Born n raised.

And thats Kansas. The terrain changes drastically from east to west, Even from north to south. The closer you get to the Rockies the more rugged the terrain gets. And there are many ares in central Kansas that look exactly like that sinkhole.

When I was younger, I enjoyed playing in some shale banks just south of town. They were fairly steep and cut through for quite a ways. It was fun sliding down em on your feet. You could also find all kinds of fossils.

There are huge cracks around the perimeter of the hole and idiots (even the reporter) are standing next to them I can see a DARWIN award winner there sometime soon.

For anyone who hasn't heard of the Darwin Awards

reply to post by VoidHawk

sorry didn't mean to sound like I was pinning the impact crater thing on you.

I think what makes the disappearing grass issue is that there wasn't much there to begin with. I'll bet the sinkhole has to do with the aquifer shrinking.

Originally posted by bottleslingguy
reply to post by VoidHawk

 

sorry didn't mean to sound like I was pinning the impact crater thing on you.

No probs

Originally posted by bottleslingguy
I'll bet the sinkhole has to do with the aquifer shrinking.

About 10 years ago I worked on a construction site half a mile from where I now live. It was a housing project and piles had to be driven into the ground and concrete platforms were placed on top of them, and the houses built on top.
When they were putting in the piles they would have to push them through about 8 foot of clay, then the piles would just free-fall for about another 20 feet and then hit something solid. Watching the piles being placed into the ground made me realise I live on top of a thin skin of clay! Under that clay is about 20 foot of something very soft, so soft the piles just fell through it!
While watching heavy machinery track up and down the site I realised I could actually see the ground sink as the machine went over it, and then it would rise back up as the machine moved off of it. It was very unnerving to be standing by those heavy machines!
I suspect some time in the future, as underground water levels change, we'll be seeing holes like we see in the OP appear, or worse we'll lose some houses!

Originally posted by RestlessEnergy
To anyone asking about fracking (hydraulic fracturing) - I live in Northwest Kansas, about an hour from Wallace, and I am not aware of any horizontal drilling in Wallace County, nor any drilling at all in the area around this sinkhole (which should be in either Section 12-T12S-R39W or Section 7-T12S-R38W, if it's 8 miles north of the town of Wallace).

Two good resources for tracking oilfield activity in Kansas are the Kansas Geological Survey (www.kgs.ku.edu... activity history by legal description at www.kgs.ku.edu...) and the Kansas Corporation Commission (which keeps track of current intents to drill at www.kcc.state.ks.us...).

If you want to see a map of this area, and any historical oilfield activity in the vicinity, check maps.kgs.ku.edu... - Wallace County is the third county from the top on the far western edge of the state, the town of Wallace is in the eastern quarter of the county.

wow..

ask the genie for a post that intelligent and not a one liner and then ask for data to track fracking in the state..

REQUEST ~Granted.. !!

THx you ..

Originally posted by freedomwv
reply to post by AthlonSavage

 

That is what I was thinking. It looks like a crater more than a sink hole; although have not seem many of each.

It is always hard to fully explain stuff like that but I will give it a shot anyway.

I put my money on it being a small sinkhole that was cause by something cracking the surface during a really dry season.

well..

this is happeing all over the globe it seems, so if it's the cracking of the surface .. then why are they all round.. and not just a huge crack ..

reply to post by wmd_2008

Off topic. But DAM! Was looking through that site you linked and some of the ways people died just left me speechless. I mean check out Angry Wheelchair Man, Textbook Double Double Darwin, Modern Armor, and love struck, or falling in love. Just by a quick look at some of the stories on that site I ran into a more then a few stories were people died because they decided to get freaky in the most bizarre places like in the middle of a dam road. I never knew it was such a common way people died...Bizarre.

But ya your right, I don't think standing at the edge of a possibly spreading sinkhole may be such a good idea, even if it looks like the collapsing may take days, or weeks, or even years, you just never know. Especially when you see cracks under you and your standing at the edge of it pointing at the growing cracks in the ground.

reply to post by VoidHawk


When I was designing steel forms for concrete construction, we often came upon plans that required piers to be sunk to bedrock before anything else could be built. Sometimes it is surprising how much nonstable dirt you have to go through before you hit that bedrock. I would like to know if the Earth is growing because when you look into the Grand Canyon and see all the layers that the Colorado River has eroded through, you can see there is lots and lots of sediment that was deposited and each layer was the surface of the earth at one point in time.

reply to post by groingrinder


You migh be interested in keeping an eye on the results of this post in that case.

There will be a research thread with this as one of the areas of focus, it will be one of turnkey questions we posit.