Winter has arrived in the Mountain State, bringing with it the annual wintertime crop of potholes.
Potholes form when water gets into cracks in the road, then freezes and expands. Constant freezing and thawing over the winter turns little cracks into big cracks, and eventually turns big cracks into potholes.
“Water is our worst enemy,” said Joe Pack, P.E., West Virginia Division of Highways (WVDOH) Chief Engineer of Operations. Almost all of the WVDOH’s pavement preservation methods are designed to keep water away from roadways so its effects can’t degrade pavement.
Although potholes can occur year-round, most crop up during the cold winter months. Unfortunately, winter is when the WVDOH has the fewest options for repairs.
To properly fix a pothole, the best method is to mill out the area around the pothole in a neat square or rectangle about two inches deep. The ground-up asphalt and debris is then carefully swept out of the hole and a sticky layer of tack is applied to help asphalt adhere better. Fresh, hot asphalt is then placed in the hole and tamped down solid with a roller.
When properly done, a pothole patch done in this manner will last for years, and be smooth enough to be virtually undetectable to drivers.
But the WVDOH and its contracting partners can’t use hot asphalt in the winter. Asphalt plants shut down when the weather gets cold and stop making asphalt.
Ground temperatures should also be above 40 degrees Fahrenheit for asphalt to cure properly.
But repair crews can still make temporary pothole repairs using a mixture of cold asphalt. Potholes are milled out square and filled in the same manner as hot asphalt, but the cold mixture is less durable and intended as a short-term solution until permanent repairs can be made when asphalt plants reopen in spring.
On bridges and approaches, the WVDOH and contractors can use a special quick-setting concrete mixture to patch potholes. On Monday, December 23, 2024, WVDOH repair crews were using that method to patch eight potholes on the Fort Hill Bridge on Interstate 64 in Charleston, a span near the Kanawha Turnpike entrance ramp in South Charleston, and on I-64 near Culloden.
The WVDOH and its contracting partners have been fortunate to have had several mild winters in a row, allowing asphalt plants to open as early as the end of January to get a jump start on the spring patching season.
Thanks to warm weather arriving early, in 2024 the WVDOH was able to patch potholes along 6,585 miles of roadway. That’s the distance from Charleston to the southern tip of South America, almost all of Europe, and most of Africa.
All that patching isn’t in a straight line, of course. Some stretches of road don’t have any potholes at all, some may have one or two, and some may have a dozen or more. By properly patching potholes this year, the WVDOH should have fewer potholes to patch in coming years.
