The washed out culvert was on Thomas Road about a quarter mile north of the intersection of Thomas and McDonald Road.

The washed-out culvert.

There is a temptation to turn this article into another installment of “Ask Mr./Ms. Kane County Person,” but we’ll resist that because (a) we’ve got another one coming tomorrow, (b) we don’t want to scare you, (c) it’s not really a question from an alert reader so much as it is (d) a correction and (e) I’m sorry about that.

The headline of the article “Sinkhole Swallows Vehicle, Causes Pickup to Drive on Top of It at 3:50AM in Rural Kane County,” is correct, except for the fact that it wasn’t a sinkhole.

This was pointed out in an email from alert reader Tom Palansky at 6:57 a.m. Wednesday:

“Based on the pictures I have seen, it is not a sinkhole. Appears to be a washed out culvert. Big difference,” Tom said. “Please talk to an engineer to help with the facts.”

So we did. The engineer is Carl Schoedel, who was kind enough to point out that, “Yes, ‘a washed-out culvert’ would be more accurate description.”

The way these things work is, the initial press release never actually said the hole was a sinkhole. But it did say it was “described as a sinkhole,” and we picked up on that and put it in the headline. By “we” I mean Kane County Connects and a multitude of media outlets.

For further reference, for those who care, here’s an excerpt from and a link to an article on the science.howstuffworks website appropriately titled, “How Sinkholes Work.”

“Also called sinks, sinkholes owe much to water. A sinkhole usually forms by erosion caused by frequent exposure to water. It comes down to the type of rocks underlying the soil (as opposed to the soil above called the overburden). Most sinkholes occur in areas where the bedrock is formed from soft minerals and rocks like salt, gypsum, limestone, dolomite or others belonging to the evaporate or carbonate classes of rocks.”

So, a “washed-out culvert” probably is more accurate because that’s what happened: it got washed out due to the deluge from the Monday/Tuesday storms rather than the evaporation of bedrock minerals.

So there you have it.

Tune in tomorrow for the actual second installment of “Ask Mr./Ms. Kane County Person,” which will attempt to answer the musical question, “Hey, Where Are the Signs on Randall Road Announcing Route 38 Is Coming Up?”