© 2025
In touch with the world ... at home on the High Plains
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations
Our translator station serving St. Francis and Cheyenne County at 96.3 FM is off the air due to an air conditioning breakdown at its leased transmitter site, making it too hot for HPPR's equipment to operate. We are currently working to fix the situation. We apologize for the loss of service and ask listeners to tune to KZNK at 90.1 FM or listen on line through the player above or HPPR's mobile app.

Radar Shows Huge Patch Of West Texas Land Shifting

CC0 Creative Commons

Recent radar imagery shows a large portion of West Texas, near the New Mexico border, is sinking at alarming rates.

Two massive sinkholes are heaving and moving near Wink, Texas, according to a geophysical team from Southern Methodist University. The sinking is occurring across a 4000-square-mile region. Some areas have sunk as much as three and a half feet in a little over two years, reports phys.org.

Zhong Lu, a professor in the Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences at SMU, says the ground movement isn’t normal. He warned that the sinking and heaving represents a danger to residents, roads, railroads, levees, dams, and oil and gas pipelines, as well as potential pollution of ground water. In recent years, there has been heavy production of hydrocarbons in the area, as a result of oil production in the Permian Basin. Lu said, “Proactive, continuous detailed monitoring from space is critical.”