Fire, drought, mudslides and now giant sinkholes: Mother Nature must be upset with Colorado

Let’s take a quick inventory of what Mother Nature has done to Colorado in the last few weeks: record-breaking heat that buckled pavement in Boulder, a drought so severe that parks officials are begging you not to take selfies with fish, wildfires that have scorched more than 260,000 acres, mudslides that buried I-70 under three feet of debris and swept a motorcyclist off a highway in San Miguel County and now — because apparently the ground itself has had enough — a giant sinkhole just swallowed part of Main Street in Carbondale.

West Main Street in the small mountain town about 170 miles west of Denver and just south of Glenwood Springs was closed Tuesday morning after a sinkhole opened up near Hendrick Drive. The town of Carbondale said crews are on site filling and compacting the hole so it can eventually support vehicle traffic again, but the street is expected to remain closed through at least Friday. A detour is in place, and the town is asking drivers to avoid the area.

For Denver readers, Carbondale is roughly a three-hour drive on I-70 — the same I-70 that was closed Monday night after a debris flow buried 300 yards of highway between Silt and New Castle under mud, logs and rocks. CDOT’s Jason Smith described it bluntly: “A very quick, very heavy rain and hail storm brought a lot of moisture and the dry ground was not able to absorb, which caused massive flooding.” That’s the theme of Colorado’s summer in one sentence: The ground is too dry to absorb anything, but when the rain finally comes, it doesn’t soak in — it slides, floods and apparently creates sinkholes in charming mountain towns.

It’s also worth noting that earlier this month, Highway 133 near Carbondale — the same corridor — saw a small sinkhole that quickly escalated into severe road damage after flooding from nearby Bear Creek. So this isn’t Carbondale’s first rodeo with the ground giving way this summer. It’s the sequel nobody asked for.

If the state were a character in a disaster movie, this is the point where it would look directly at the camera and say, “What’s next?” Please don’t answer that, Mother Nature. We’re good.