Weird Street Bulge Indicated Monstrous Presence?

It was Friday the 13th one hot July day in 1984 when a 20-foot long, 2-foot tall bulge appeared on the surface of a Fort Worth city street. The weird eruption snaked sinuously for a few moments, as if something alive were writhing beneath, before vanishing without so much as cracking the asphalt. Out of concerns that there might have been a rupture in a natural gas line, the city tore into street and tested for presence of any gasses in the soil. The results were negative and the various strata of soils beneath were uniform and undisturbed. Within a few short moments, the phenomenon ended leaving many, including fire fighter Charlie McCafferty, completely baffled. Could the sheer heat of the summer day have caused the asphalt to bubble up so dramatically? National Weather Service data shows that it broke the 100 degree mark that day, but it often does during a north Texas summer, so we’d expect to see such a phenomenon more often. Was there some other factor at work? Or did some subterranean creature make its presence known. I'm picturing the creatures from the movie Tremors at this point.

Along those lines, a tabloid at the time ran a story by a stringer named Frank Kendal that reported unnamed city officials were executing a "top-level investigation" of a giant earthworm terrorizing the city. It recounted that one resident, Calvin Lang, saw a similar formation appear on his land at the edge of town. He poked the bulge with a rake and it disappeared. Its passage through his property, however, damaged several buildings, fences, and even uprooted trees and shrubs. The tale continued when a man named Jeremy Boiter claimed to have seen a giant tentacle burst through the ground about 2 miles away from Lang's place. It snatched several cats and a couple of dogs in its "slick, dripping mouth." Another local, Phil Dewar, claimed to have seen scraps of birds lying about.

There seems to be some evidence, scant as it is, that the original weird bulge in the street really occurred. It was covered by reputable papers of the time. However, the further Lovecraftian embellishments provided by the National Examiner might simply be the typical sensationalism such rags are known for. For instance, the fire fighter named in the account wasn't aware of the fantastical elements related by the Examiner until the following winter when two frightened women phoned him regarding the creature they had read about in the tabloid. Either way, the Summer of the Bulge (as I'm terming it) was quickly over with no other incidents reported since.