With the arrival of drier weather, the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet has crews out with the drier weather working on potholes created after the past few weeks’ large swings in temperature and winter storms.
KYTC Spokesperson Keith Todd says it’s usual for crews to be busy filling holes in March and April but recent weather has been ideal for create the pesky holes.
“We had temperatures down near zero last week or at below zero,” he said. “Anytime you get a rapid warm up like that and then you get extremely wet weather where soils are completely saturated then pothole season pretty much sets in pretty quickly.”
Todd says since potholes can’t be repaired if they’re filled with standing water, and crews are filling them with cold mix as weather allows.
He also warns drivers to watch out for the potentially dangerous holes.
“If you see a pothole and you’re about to hit it, one of the keys here is don’t slam on your breaks.” Todd said. “If you’re not already slowed down, if you slam on your breaks and hit a pothole it just makes it that much more likely that you’re going to damage a tire or a rim or some of the suspension on your car because it increase the impact with the pothole.”
Slowing down if time allows can also prevent major vehicle damage.
Todd says he doesn’t have up-to-date information on this year’s pothole repair budget.
