Maybe this isn't precisely about weather, but it's weather-related! My husband has a sitework company and they were hired to fill in some sinkholes that appeared at a business in Levy County after the heavy rains from Frances. He took a few photos before they began filling....
This belongs to a local electrical contractor. DH and his guys pulled it out of the hole for them.
Has the sink hole problem in FL been increasing with all the rain?
All I can say is WOW! Sinkholes seem to open without much notice and a few months ago one opened on a local road here. It created an accident and chaos!
Your second picture is really a sight to see.
imway, yes, excessive rain tends to open up sinkholes. The area where these occurred is known for its "Swiss cheese" terrain as sinkholes are a constant problem there.
Great shots. If you have kids, they can use for show and tell!
Weeds, good idea, but mine have all been out of school for years!
I orginally tried to post several at one time, but I guess I ran over my quota. Let me try a couple more...
Another one
And another...
Great pics.....I use to live in Keystone Heights, Fl and there was a huge sinkhole in a subdivision. I took my son over there and watched is eat a house. it was terrible but facinating and made horrendous noises, grumbles. Did these keep growing?
Holy cow, a person could get lost in those sink holes for sure. Great pictures.
These holes have been filled (per an engineer's instructions) with large gravel and concrete. In my husband's opinion, it's only a matter of time before they start caving in around the edges again.
Sink holes open up in drought times too. The water table lowers and no longer "floats" the earth. The water table is very close to the surface in some areas and is covered by "hard pan". My company almost lost a backhoe when it cut through the hard pan that was very close to the surface. Dropped weighted lines in to test depth, but never reached the bottom!
The aggregate companies surface mine coral rock in Dade and Broward counties in south Florida. This leaves large lakes that fill with the most beautiful clear blue water.
The is probably WAY more than you ever wanted to know about S. Florida *grin*
Pati
Is it the colapse of an empty space below the surface that causes this? If so, how did the empty space get there to begin with?
John, picture Florida as a big chunck of Swiss cheese. The cheese is coral rock and the holes are water. Water flows freely through the earth. The Everglades National Park is actually a shallow river that flows into the Gulf of Mexico. We have many DG's that know WAY more about this than I do, but this is my simplistic explanation.
Pati
Here's the scoop:
http://www.dep.state.fl.us/geology/geologictopics/sinkhole.htm
(Check out the FAQ's for more details)
This message was edited Sep 15, 2004 11:35 AM
Thanks. That explains it! Interesting place, Florida.
Great website, Amaryllisgal!!!! Seems like no matter how long I live in Florida, there is always something new to learn. Miami was my home for 50 of my 74 years, and believe me when I say I was NEVER bored! LOL I thought I had retired to the "small-town" quiet life, but the hurricanes seem to find me! There's quite a few of us Andrew suvivors in this area now, and I guess we take a more fatalistic attitude. The storm is scary, the aftermath is long and exausting, but surviving is the name of the game.
Pati
Pati, we lived by Maule Lake, under what is now the expanded airport. I can remember the surface mining and dredging. I heard the word "oolite" for years but it wasn't until I took a tech job in the geology lab at Johns Hopkins that I ever saw one.
I made "thin sections" which are extremely sections of rocks that you can see through under a microscope. The oolites were the most beautiful!
Darius, remember the houses built from the coral rock (hence Coral Gables name)? I always loved the patina of the old homes and the little mosses and ferns that grew in them. They seem to be out of fashion now, more's the pity. Did you ever go to the "Kampong" (sp?) in Coconut Grove, or Majorie Stoneman Douglas' house? Now it seems everything is built from a cookie cutter.
Pati
I remember the old Tabby Houses and some cut coral and limestone houses.
I didn't discover Majorie Stoneman Douglas until I moved away (wasn't interested in FL then) and as much time as I spent in Coconut Grove, I don't remember her house or "Kampong".
We had sink holes behind my grandfather's house. I'd have to watch where I walked when I went across the back to visit a friend.
Pati, I know you've seen a lot of changes in the state! I've never spent much time in the Miami area but I'll bet the old coral houses are neat looking. Also, I'm so glad you made it through the latest storm - hopefully that will be the last one for a while!
Darius, I've heard the term "Tabby" for that type of building material - how is it different from the coquina used extensively in St. Augustine?
I think they are somewhat similiar in looks but I think coquina could be cut whereas tabby was molded.
Coquina: A coarse-grained, porous, friable variety of clastic limestone made up chiefly of fragments of shells.
Tabby is a cement made from lime, sand and oyster shells. Builders extracted the lime by burning the oyster shells. They then painstakingly removed all salt from the shells and from the sand to keep the cement firm and whole (the salt weakened the cement mixture). The cleaned sand, a mixture of coarse and fine varieties extracted from sand pits, was added to the lime and shells to make the tabby cement. Tabby construction required only unskilled laborers, not the more expensive carpenters (and sawmills) that lumber entailed.
Wet tabby was poured and tamped into a wooden form made of two parallel planks extending along the full length of a wall. The planks were tied together by crosspieces. The boards were moved up repeatedly as each layer of tabby dried (the imprint of the planks is often visible on finished structures), up to the desired height of the wall.
Settlers also made individual bricks of tabby and used the cement to construct all manner of houses, farm structures, churches, fortifications, sea and exterior walls, fireplaces, tombstones, and other structures
http://www.co.beaufort.sc.us/bftlib/tabby.htm
Man, what a lot of work! But I guess it was worth it since the structures lasted for centuries. Thanks for the info!
There is a rather large lake spread out in the Tallahassee area (Lake Jackson) in which, every 25 years, all the water drains out down into sinkholes that are under it.
The drain down is not like overnight, but it happens quickly, perhaps within a month for most of the lake. A few isolated pockets of lower level water remain that have natural barriers from the areas with sinkholes.
Gradually, over time, the water fills back up. It takes about a year or so for it to refill.
This lake spans a large area of north and northwest Tallahassee. Many wealthy people have homes on this lake and are not pleased, to say the least when this happens. I doubt that realtors and builders tell them about that interesting little feature of the lake!!!
When the lake drains down, the gov't agency responsible for lake health here dredges the lake and cleans out most of the non-native species and gunk. If you're quick with your hands, you can go out in the lake and pick up the fish from the rapidly dwindling water supply.
Needless to say, the lakeside homeowners are even more unhappy when all the large dredging equipment and big dump trucks are driving through their pristine suburban streets, dropping and dragging muddy black muck from one area to another. Oh, the hue and cry!
Judith, it is true - those with the fancier homes do tend to whine the biggest about messes don't they? Our planet earth has some really amazing surprises doesn't it?
Messes they helped make by being there!
I'd be out in that lake bed with my metal detector. No telling how many watches, sets of keys, wedding rings or whatever else might be there.
I'm sure some people were! LOL
Shame I'm not up to that kind of activity anymore!
It's a really widespread lake bed!
The story of the sinkhole in Lake Jackson really fascinated me so I did a search to find out what it looks like. I looked at a couple of links (all of the lake drained) and in my search I found what happens to some of it's resident turtles/amphibians, etc when their home dries up:
http://www.floridawildlifemagazine.com/turtles-drought.htm
Thanks, Lilypon.
Thanks, Lilypon! I remembered about the turtles when I read your link. I saw the "fences" when I drove along Hwy 27, and read in the paper about the problems occurring, but never made the connection. Tallahassee often has these "fences" along roads, usually used to prevent erosion during construction activities, or duct replacement.
Also, somewhere here, a tunnel was included in a road construction plan just for turtles and wild
life to use to cross safely. I think it was on the south side, probably when changing traffic around the new stadium for FSU.
Most people here generally are aware and promote the huge beautiful trees and variety of wild life we are so fortunate to have.
Recently, a major traffic artery was designed to divide around a huge old live oak tree in the center.
We also have several canopy roads, that are two-lane arteries with huge trees on each side that merge across the middle of the road. Beautiful protected natural views, native plants blooming. They are the pride and joy of the town, despite the grumbles of some motorists. Our attitude is, if you live or work here, live with it, cause it ain't gonna change!
Tallahassee truly is a beautiful city, suffering painful growing pains. I love it here! Sometimes the traffic is annoying, but, just ramp up the car stereo, or listen to an interesting talk show, and you get where you're going. If you're late, well, you left too late!
Great thread Amaryllisgal! The pictures you posted really show what happens.
