(Reuters) – Engineers were working Tuesday to close a yawning sinkhole that gobbled up a part of the end zone of a Tennessee university’s football stadium.
The 40-foot-wide and 40-foot-deep chasm appeared at the Austin Peay State University in Clarksville, as a construction crew on Monday tried to fill in a much smaller hole that was discovered during a $19 million facelift of the stadium.
“As they began digging, it became bigger and bigger and bigger,” said Bill Persinger, spokesman for the 10,000-student university, located about 50 miles northwest of Nashville.
Persinger said the construction company and engineers are working toward a “permanent fix” and that the field would be ready by kick-off of the football season in September.
While this sinkhole is larger than most, it’s not a rare occurrence on the campus.
“I’ve seen dozens of them. They come up all the time” in the region and on the campus, Persinger said.
Sinkholes are common where the rock below the land surface is limestone, carbonate rock, salt beds, or rocks that can naturally be dissolved as groundwater circulates through them, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. As the rock dissolves, spaces and caverns develop underground.
A 40-foot sinkhole opened up under the National Corvette Museum in Kentucky in February, swallowing eight collector cars.
And last year a sinkhole in Florida swallowed a section of a resort villa near Disney World.
World’s Most Extreme Weather
- Hottest: Lut Desert, Iran
Hottest: Lut Desert, Iran
You might’ve thought Death Valley held this record. Nope. The heart of the Lut Desert is just too hot and remote for scientists to even set up a weather station there. In 2005, a satelite recorded a temperature of 159.3 degrees Fahrenheit.
- Coldest Inhabited: Northeast Siberia
Coldest Inhabited: Northeast Siberia
The coldest place on Earth is (shockingly) a ridge in Antarctica, where temperatures drop to -136 degrees Fahrenheit. In terms of where human beings actually live, several Russian cities in Siberia like Yakutsk and Oymyakon take the title, with a record of -90 degrees F, where it’s not uncommon for birds to freeze mid-flight.
- Rainiest: Mawsynram, India
Rainiest: Mawsynram, India
Residents of Mawsynram soundproof huts so they can sleep through deafening rain, clouds float through homes, monsoon season lasts 6 months each year. The British once had an outpost in the region, but it was closed because too many officers killed themselves. Cheery. Their average rainfall exceeds 460 inches, but their record is just about 1000 inches.
- Driest: Atacama desert, Chile
Driest: Atacama desert, Chile
There are towns situated through this area of Northern Chile, where it rains so little that their tap water is laced with Arsenic. But they’re immune to that. The real story is in uninhabited areas of desert, where the environment is basically Mars. The soil has literally no life, and it will never, ever rain there. Ever. But the temperatures are mild, at least.
- Hottest, inhabited: Dallol, Ethiopia
Hottest, inhabited: Dallol, Ethiopia
If you can make it by camel past Ethiopia’s “Gateway to Hell,” you’ll reach Dallol, surrounded by volcanoes, salt flats, and regular earthquakes. The average annual temperature is 94 Fahrenheit, which doesn’t sound bad, but summers get up to 148 degrees. But at least the colors are pretty, and you can mine some salt!
- Most, uh, Lava-Prone: Yogyakarta, Indonesia
Most, uh, Lava-Prone: Yogyakarta, Indonesia
Yogyakarta is built at the foot of one of the world’s most active volcanoes, Mount Merapi. The mountain can, at any moment, destroy the town by simply spewing toxic gas, hot ash, or lava. Not to mention the devastating tsunamis and earthquakes that follow an eruption.
- Snowiest: Honshu Island, Japan
Snowiest: Honshu Island, Japan
The average annual snowfall in higher regions of the Japanese Alps tends to reach around, oh, only 1200 to 1500 inches, with snow depth measured up to 465″. A nearby town has recorded 68.2 inches of snow in one day. It’s for days like these that they have hot water sprinklers embedded in public streets.
