© Vladimir EpifanovSince the crater was formed in a 2013 blowout, the crater's size rapidly increased at least 15 times during the next year and a half.
Startling new details emerge of the most mysterious of Siberia's newly created giant permafrost holes.
First accounts of the gaping fissure in the earth - found by reindeer herders, who were almost swallowed up by the crater - reported that it was around 4 metres in width and 'about 100 metres' deep.
Scattered over a radius of one kilometre were lumps of displaced soil, sand and ice which had erupted from the earth.
Now we can reveal significant new details about this remote crater on the Taimyr peninsula in Krasnoyarsk region, some 440 kilometres from dozens of other newly-formed giant holes.
Firstly, respected scientist Dr Vladimir Epifanov, the sole leading expert to so far visit the site, said:
'There is verbal information that residents of nearby villages - at a distance of 70-100 km - heard a sound like an explosion, and one of them watched a clear glow in the sky. It was about one month after the Chelyabinsk meteorite.'Locals wrongly suspected it was another exploding space object falling from the sky, it is believed.
This is the first known account of the explosive sound, and a bright light in the sky for which - as yet - there seems no explanation.
Comment: Keep in mind the tremendous floods that have plagued countries all over the world lately. If such an amount of precipitation were combined with much lower temperatures due to volcanic eruptions or other causes, snowfalls of this magnitude may become much more common, and more widespread.