PRINCETON, Minn. — The roads are cleared of snow and ice.
But now we've got another problem on our hands now, and it's a familiar one: potholes.
"As the snow and ice melts, it goes down into the cracks, and when it freezes it expands and kind of blows up or pops that asphalt up," said Daniel Erickson, president of Erickson Asphalt Services in Princeton. "That's what creates your potholes."
Oh, potholes -- a problem since the beginning of time, especially in Minnesota.
But Erickson said the conditions of the roads here in mid-January are unusual.
"It looks like spring," he said. "The best thing is if it just got below freezing and stayed there. But this freeze-thaw, freeze-thaw, that is just working that asphalt apart."
A MnDOT spokesperson said that the agency's crews work to fill potholes year-round, although during the winter they have to work around snowstorms. A spokesperson for St. Paul Public Works gave a similar explanation. The same employees who can patch potholes also operate the snow plows.
Erickson Asphalt, meanwhile, uses cold patches as a temporary fix for potholes in the winter.
"It could last anywhere from a day to a month. Really, you have to wait until we get some warm weather," Erickson said, "so we can we can use the hot mix to fix it permanently."
Until then?
"Just trying to get by until spring when we can fix them permanently," Erickson said. "Just watch out and try to avoid them!"
If you spot a pothole on a state road, you can use this link to report them to MNDOT.
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