Clinch Mountain in Hawkins County: a large rockslide in Tennessee

This weekend a significant rockslide from Clinch Mountain closed down Highway 70 near to Cave Springs in Hawkins County in Tennessee, USA. Amanda Ketchledge, a reporter from WATE 6 News tweeted the image below of the landslide, taken by Jay Herring:

The landslide on Highway 70 N from Clinch Mountain near Cave Springs in Hawkins County. Photo by Jay Herring via Amanda Ketchledge

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WBIR has a nice article about the landslide, which includes this aerial image of the rockslide:

Rockslide at Clinch Mountain on Highway 70 in Hawkins County in Tennessee. Photo from the Tennessee Department of Transportation via WBIR.

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The image below appears to be the location on Google Earth. The spot is at 36.5012, -83.0282 if you want to take a look:

Google Earth image of the location of the landslide at Clinch Mountain in Hawkings County Tennessee at the weekend.

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From the image above the location looks innocent enough, but the images of the aftermath suggest that this is a classic planar rockslide on pre-existing joints that dip approximately parallel to the slope.  This has resulted in the generation of tabular pieces of rock debris.  It is of course fortunate that no-one was on the road at this location at the time of the landslide.  On Sunday work started to clear the road.