A sinkhole has formed on the North Lawn of the White House, and predictably, the temptation was too great for many on social media, who filled the void with all the “drain the swamp” jokes and metaphors one could imagine.
But forget the obvious political jabs and the fact that President Trump uses that phrase as a rallying cry about eliminating corruption in Washington: The saying has some geological merit.
— The New York Times
"The White House sits at the intersection of a Quaternary colluvium (base of steep slope) deposit & a Pleistocene fluvial (river) & estuarine deposit," Jess Phoenix, a volcanologist, geologist, and currently a congressional candidate for the Democratic Party in California, commented on the natural occurrence that some have given prophetic meaning. "It’s built on poorly consolidated sediments, not bedrock. Sinkholes happen."
4 Comments
Sinkholes fucking terrify me. If I wake up in the middle of the night and think about a sinkhole swallowing me and my family up I'll lay awake terrified. If I'm visiting Kentucky and think about a sinkhole I'll be preoccupied by worry at least until I have sufficient bourbon. When I see news reports with images of sinkholes I get tense and feel my stomach lurching.
That said: I'm currently more terrified by what is *in* the White House than by what's happening in the lawn.
Agreed. Those aerial shots are mind-boggling and terrifying. If you can't trust good old terra firma to hold up, what's left to rely on?
https://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2014/...
this is a great map, blue or purple is bad
All of D.C. is one big sinkhole. We'd be better off if the earth just opened up and swallowed it whole.
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