A Toyota Corolla became an unlikely stunt car in Cape Girardeau, Missouri, when a heatwave turned a quiet road into a ramp. Caught on video by bystander Albert Blackwell, the sedan soared skyward after hitting a buckled pavement.
Cape Girardeau, a riverside town 120 miles south of St. Louis, was baking under a heat advisory, with temperatures hitting 91°F but feeling closer to 106°F. Concrete roads, like the one on Siemers Drive, don’t take kindly to such extremes. As heat expands pavement slabs, pressure builds where joints are too tight or cracks already linger. Moisture trapped beneath—common in humid Missouri summers—only amplifies the strain. According to a prior Missouri Department of Transportation report, this recipe of heat, humidity, and weak pavement can make roads “explode” upward, sometimes by over a foot. Blackwell, filming a smaller buckle, captured the moment Siemers Drive surged 18 inches, just as the Corolla approached.
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That Corolla and its compact frame, weighing around 3,000 pounds, was most certainly not built for airtime. Miraculously, no injuries were reported, though the driver’s nerves must’ve been shredded.
Roads buckling isn’t new—Wisconsin reported 53 incidents in the same heatwave, Minnesota saw motorcycle crashes from similar blowouts—but capturing it on video with such cinematic flair is rare. The Corolla’s flight, brief as it was, feels like a snapshot of our times: infrastructure straining under climate stress, ordinary lives disrupted by extraordinary forces. City officials noted another road, Broadway, buckled the same day, warning of more to come as the heat lingered. Across the U.S., from Kansas to Maine, heat advisories blanketed millions, with pavement failures popping up like warning flares.
No word on this car’s fate, but if it drove away, it’d be a testament to over-engineered reliability. Blackwell’s footage, shared widely online, sparked awe to say the least. “The road exploded,” he told Local 12.
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