Massive hot water geyser erupts in parking lot in Russia‏

RUSSIA – Cameras in Russia seem to capture everything from fiery meteors to crazy crashes. The latest video comes from a camera mounted high above the main square in Smolensk, overlooking a busy parking lot on what appears to be a nice sunny day. It takes but seconds for a small cloud of steam, appearing harmless at first, to erupt into a hot water geyser rivaling Old Faithful. What you don’t see from the video are the brick-sized chunks of pavement and rocks that were launched into the air and onto the surrounding vehicles. Within minutes, a large flow of water has flooded the parking area as the natural geyser continues to spew water and steam hundreds of feet into the air. If this happened in our backyard, we would hightail it out of town fearing another eruption of Vesuvian magnitude – yet the locals in Smolensk seem only slightly disrupted, continuing to seek open spots in the parking lot despite the odd chaos mere yards away

Well, I bet nobody was expecting that during the day. I hope nobody was hurt, but I would have loved to have seen it!

Source

That's an absolutely awesome site, wouldn't like to be parked near it though.
Wonder how much history of this the area has, just done a quick google search but couldn't find anything (was a very quick search though as at work)

This could be the beginning of the end....

Hot water?...How we know it?....Can't be a broken pipeline?

reply to post by Trueman


Not sure how true this is as all the links from different sites link back to the same source.
It does look like steam but could be water vapour from the spray I suppose
Worrying if true

Originally posted by Isolation
reply to post by Trueman

 

Not sure how true this is as all the links from different sites link back to the same source.
It does look like steam but could be water vapour from the spray I suppose
Worrying if true

edit on 19-4-2013 by Isolation because: (no reason given)

A broken pipeline is the best answer, see this other one and compare :

reply to post by sarahlm

we would hightail it out of town fearing another eruption of Vesuvian magnitude – yet the locals in Smolensk seem only slightly disrupted, continuing to seek open spots in the parking lot despite the odd chaos mere yards away

What a good thing that most of the world is not prone to panic like some countries.

Looks like a district heating pipe burst to me. I don't think that is volcanic at all.

The most amazing occurrence took place in the city of Smolensk. A hot water pipe that runs under the main square burst during the day, flooding the area which was filled with car in boiling water.

The artificial geyser's eruption threw tons of trash and stones as large as a building bricks into the air, damaging cars and scaring onlookers. The whole incident was captured by a surveillance camera, and thanks to smolensk.ru, we can also show you photos from the scene. The incident doesn't seem to affect Smolensk's residents very much, as they treat this as a daily occurrence.

Source

Yup - not natural.

OOOH. Good place to build a sauna and hot tub. I can see possibilities here. This could be a really good thing, think of how many buildings they could heat with the excess heat from the sauna

I want one

reply to post by sarahlm


Was it related to the quake maybe?
M7.2 - 250km ENE of Kuril'sk, Russia
2013-04-19 03:05:53 UTC
earthquake.usgs.gov...

Those islands are a helluva long way from Smolensk i think....
If true i am flabbergasted......
very interesting happening.....
looks like a pipe burst however.....

Originally posted by ahnggk
This could be the beginning of the end....

You're kidding right?

If not, you best take off your Tinfoil hat, it's effecting yout brain and making you dumber.

Hell, doomsdayers come out of the woodwork everytime there's a disaster, or minor disruption.

I bet if someone posted a story about a kitten stuck in a tree, the doomsdayers would find a spin on it..lol

From what I understand, a lot of Russian cities have steam piped around as a city service for heating purposes. So the source of the geyser may be man-made rather than natural. Maybe that's why the people there aren't freaking out too much, eventually the public works will shut off the valve supplying that pipeline and get started on fixing that mess.

We should show them what painted-parking-line technology can do for a parking lot. That is some serious 18th century parking there. Sure looks like a fine place to steam clean the undercarriage though.

It's most likely a high pressure pipeline. Cool if it's not though.

If you look at the beginning, you see there is already water leaking up from the ground, so I tend to say its a water supply line. Steam pipe explosions look way more violent but could be steam, too of course but I strike out the geyser theory completely.

Originally posted by zayonara
We should show them what painted-parking-line technology can do for a parking lot. That is some serious 18th century parking there.

Yeah, the 18th century (1700-1800) sure had parking problems