Is The New Madrid Fault Waking Up?

Sinkhole drains lake near St-Louis, Missouri – Major Memphis bridge cracked – Is the New Madrid waking up?

 Strange Sounds

Pipeline shutdown, Hernando de Soto bridge cracked in Memphis, sinkhole in Missouri draining a lake… Coincidence? or signs of the next big one along the New madrid Fault in the Midwest?

Lone Elk Park in St. Louis County has a leaky lake — and an SUV-sized sinkhole that opened up there in recent days has drained about a third of it.

St. Louis County Parks Director Tom Ott said he got word Friday that the lake had dropped about 3 feet, and then enough water drained away over the weekend to reveal the sinkhole.

This isn’t the first time this has happened at the manmade lake, called the Lone Elk Reservoir, said Ott. In 2016, a similar sinkhole about 4 to 5 feet across appeared in the vicinity of the new one. Then, they had someone inspect it and had concrete slurry poured into the hole to patch it.

The county will get a hydraulic engineer to look at the sinkhole, and will send someone with a drone to take pictures of it. They’ll also add signage along the shoreline to warn people to keep away.

Ott wonders if a small-magnitude earthquake reported near Eureka on April 20 shook anything loose.

He said that in the early 1990s the lake was always full, but in the past 20 years it hasn’t held water the way it should. “We’ve had people look at it — they couldn’t tell where it was leaking,” he said.

The water has drained underground and come up on the Castlewood State Park side in an old creek bed, but the water was not causing issues.

Meanwhile, all lanes on the Hernando Desoto Bridge were closed Tuesday until further notice after an inspection found a crack that requires investigation.

Memphis Police said the bridge is being inspected, and it is unknown when the I-40 bridge will reopen. It could be closed for month…

Right now, drivers can use the Interstate 55 bridge to cross the Mississippi River.

Is the New Madrid Seismic Zone heating up?

Now, if you add to this giant sinkhole, the shutdown of the I-40 bridge in downtown Memphis due to infrastructure damage and the hacked (?) pipeline… Are these more signs of the overdue New Madrid earthquake?

It’s time to talk about what we can expect when the New Madrid rips and tears. The infamous New Madrid Fault is forecast to take out 150 miles of the Midwest and will end up more devastating than the San Andreas quake which is also overdue!

The New Madrid fault line essentially follows the Mississippi River from Illinois to Arkansas. The last major adjustment of this seismic zone was way back in December 1811 and since science says this happens about every 200 years we’re WAY OVERDUE for another big adjustment and we have a lot of ground to cover.

This seismic zone is a series of faults under the continental crust which can’t be seen on the surface. The fault system extends 150 miles south from Cairo Illinois through Caruthersville Missouri, down through Blythesville Arkansas to Marked Tree Arkansas. It then dips into Kentucky near Fulton and into Tennessee near Reelfoot Lake and extends southeast to Dyersburg Tennessee SO it crosses five state lines and crosses the Mississippi River in at least three places.