Officials: Time will determine extent of winter’s damage to local roads
Trending
ALPENA -- Inconsistent winter weather in Alpena over the last several months has created potholes and cracks in streets, but it will be a handful of weeks before local road officials know the extent of damage.
Alpena Engineer Steve Shultz said this winter has been full of ups-and-downs in terms of temperatures and precipitation. When that happens, he said, the freeze-thaw cycle can wreak havoc on the pavement and cause damage.
Shultz said quickly changing weather conditions caused ice to form and then thaw rapidly, causing moisture in cracks to expand and contract and put stress on the structure of the road. He said this winter it seemed there were more extreme changes to the weather than years past, but right now, it is too early to tell how severe street damage is.
"The warm cold cycles we had were extreme and we would see 30-degree swings in the temperature from the afternoon into the early morning," he said. "It is just the nature of the beast."
Shultz said it is tough to gauge how much damage to the streets in Alpena there is right now, but he anticipates older roads, that needed repairs before winter, will be more negatively impacted than newer roads that are still in good condition.
Alpena County Road Commission Superintendent Curt Gonyea said so far, the paved roads in the county have held up well to the harsh winter weather conditions. He said there is sure to be some damage that will need fixing, but the full toll of the repairs won't be known until the weather warms and things thaw out.
He said depending on the weather, the condition of the roads could change before that happens.
"The conditions of the roads can change quickly and the next month will tell us a lot about what we will need to do," he said. "We'll maintain them the best we can, but for now, people will just have to bear with us until we can get out and do maintenance."
Shultz said most needed road repairs will have to wait until the weather warms. Until then the city will monitor the street conditions to see where the areas most impacted this winter are. He said often, some of the streets where buckling occurs, things sort themselves out when the weather warms and the ground shifts back to normal and the street settles with it.
Shultz added that the city relies on tips from the public on where maintenance is needed.
We can't tell where all the issues are, or go out and drive all those miles looking for them," he said. "We depend on the public to help us."