Road crews patching Calgary’s plentiful potholes
Posted Apr 6, 2011 7:51 am.
This article is more than 5 years old.
Calgary is currently dealing with a deluge of potholes thanks to a lack of chinooks over the winter.
City Roads spokesman Sean Somers says potholes are formed during freeze and thaw cycles when water gets into cracks in the pavement.
The water freezes overnight pushing the crack wide open, or it creates a void underneath the pavement that can’t support the weight of vehicles and it suddenly collapses.
“Over the course of the winter, we’ll have lots of those freeze and thaw cycles with the chinooks and so on that Calgary gets,” he says. “We really didn’t see a lot of chinooks over the winter, so what we’re seeing is one mass thaw.”
He says that might be why it seems like Calgary drivers are getting inundated with more potholes than usual when in fact it’s the same amount, just all at once.
“We haven’t seen the odd sporadic pothole earlier in the year when we would have normally,” says Somers.
He says patching potholes has become a full-time job, further complicated by last weekend’s snow.
