Several frightening sinkholes have been popping up across the UK, and scientists say that the recent bad weather is to blame.
In High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, an entire Volkswagen Lupo was swallowed up by the earth when a sinkhole appeared in a family’s driveway.
The couple's 19-year-old drievr Zoe was luckily given a replacement car after claiming on her insurance, but the appearance of the sinkhole is still unnerving to those living near flood-hit areas.
Scientist Dr Tony Cooper told MailOnline: ‘Hard statistics are difficult to find — not least because sinkholes that appear on farmland often go unreported — but having studied them for 35 years, I’d estimate that sinkholes are currently appearing at four-to-five times their normal rate.’
Motorists on the M2 in Kent were forced to take a different route when a massive sinkhole 15ft deep opened up in the central reservation, making driving conditions treacherous.
Gretel Davidson was left shocked when a sinkhole twice the size of a double decker bus opened up in her back garden in South-East London.
Dr Cooper explained how sinkholes come about. He wrote on the MailOnline: ‘The water dissolves rocks such as chalk, limestone and gypsum, making existing natural underground cavities bigger. It also scours fine material out of existing cavities. In addition, it makes the surface layers of soil composed of such things as clay or gravel heavier as they become waterlogged.’
‘Bit by bit, the cavity becomes a little bigger, the covering layers a little heavier until . . . snap . . . those covering layers no longer have the mechanical strength to span the cavity and suddenly they collapse into it, taking anything unfortunate to have been standing on the surface down with them.’
Though the sinkholes have yet to cause any injuries in the UK, they have claimed lives in parts of the US where they are more common.