Posted on 06/07/2011 12:30:26 PM PDT by WOBBLY BOB
St. Paul, Minn. — The Minnesota Department of Transportation is warning motorists to watch out for roads that might buckle without warning.
MnDOT spokesman Kent Barnard said the heat and humidity had caused pavement to heave on some Twin Cities metro highways.
Monday afternoon lanes were closed in I-94 in Minneapolis and St. Paul. Barnard said heat damaged roads in more than 20 places.
Barnard said he has not heard of accidents associated with buckling pavement. But he'd heard reports of damage to cars.
Older concrete highways are more prone to heave up, as debris fills the cracks between the panels, leaving no place for the pavement to expand.
(Excerpt) Read more at minnesota.publicradio.org ...
I’m dreading walking out of here after work....
Happened on one of our roads this morning, too. Backed up the commute considerably...
Wonder where all the $$$ is in our Transportation Fund to fix stuff like this? Oh, that’s RIGHT! Former Governor ‘Diamond Jim’ Doyle, D, WI raided it to balance the state budget a few years back! And no one said a thing...
*Facepalm*
http://www.kare11.com/weather/default.aspx
101 right now.
at least you got to work! my car is toast. I have a rental, glad it works and has high output A/C .
wouldn’t want to hit a canyon in the road on the cycle.
How do you cover this story and not give the temperatures/humidity involved, and why the Twin Cities are experiencing this problem when states across this nation have temperatures/humidity far higher, and don’t?
Is someone trying to game the system to alarm people about global warming or something, or has the Twin Cities been using sub-par highway methods?
I was wondering that too. Here at about the same latitude (eastern WA) we sometimes get to over 110 in the summer and no buckling. AZ., Death Valley, etc. much hotter yet with pavement above 160.
The road explosions happen here every summer. Because of the wide range of temperatures here from winter to spring, the roads are subject to so much expansion and contraction, a material that will withstand the exteremes hasn’t been invented yet.
Wind off the lake and 58 in TwoHarbors. http://www.wunderground.com/US/MN/Two_Harbors.html
Sounds like the “shovel ready” money isn’t reaching the road department.
Thanks Steve, good points.
Having lived in the Twin Cities for 1/2 my life, we have two seasons. Winter and pothole-road construction season.
Yea someones trying to promote global warming again.
That may be true. I appreciate the response.
We may not go quite as low but from -24 to +117 (approx. extremes in last 20 years) we do. Probably about the same net difference.
Thanks Zathras. I know New York City seems to have those two seasons also, hearing the city’s residents complain about them potholes so much.
It’s not the heat, it’s the temperature differential. Consider, it’s not unusual for parts of the frozen North (North and South Dakota, Minnesota) to get down to -40 during the winter, then when summer comes along it heats up to 110. That’s a 150 temperature differential.
Contrast that to your Death Valley, which ranges between +30 to 160 - that’s only a 130 degree variation (20 degree less variation). When that asphalt expands and contracts - it’s gotta go somewhere.
They have a history of neglect around there.
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