Temps rise, roads buckle

BROWN COUNTY - Our 90-degree heat over the last couple days has made travel difficult in a dozen or more high traffic spots because the roads are exploding.

Throughout the past 24 hours or so, the temperature has been hot enough, long enough, the pressure strong enough that the concrete couldn't expand any more and popped.

It's happening from New Orleans to Minnesota, and these are just some of the key spots in our area where the concrete has fractured: several spots along Highway 10 in the Waupaca area, also in the Fox Cities from Fond du Lac County, Neenah to east of Appleton and on into Calumet county. Roads have also been feeling the heat in the Green Bay area from Highway 57 in Door County, to I-43 and Highway 41.

Everyone makes adjustments when the temperature reaches sweltering numbers, including the roads.

"Another 90-plus degree day and the concrete elongates underneath the blacktop and breaks up or breaks loose at the weakest point that it has," said Dan Drewery with the Brown County Highway Department's traffic operations.

The weakest point Wednesday afternoon was on Highway 41, just north of Lineville Road in Brown County. Vehicles were driving over something called a blow-up, blow-out, or buckle.

"It's really quite simple," said Kim Rudat of the Wisconsin Department of Transportation. "As the road heats up, it heats underneath the road and materials beneath the road expand and as they expand they create pressure and there's no place for that pressure to go."

And when that pressure expands upward, a long hot day for Brown County highway crews, gets a little longer.
Around 4:30 in the afternoon, the crew brought the two northbound lanes of Highway 41 down to one, so they could fix the blow out.

"We don't have a choice. As you can hear in the background this thing keeps pushing higher and higher and there'll be a complete failure with concrete laying on the road very shortly," said Drewery.

To avoid greater potential for danger and a mess on the road, the crew removed a piece of concrete under the road to relieve the pressure. The crew then filled in the area, and evened it out.

Wednesday, the crew's worked on three different blow-out repairs, and if the extreme heat continues, this could be setting a trend for the summer.

"If it keeps staying over 90 degrees we'll keep working at 'em here because there's no doubt that they'll just keep popping," said Drewery.

If you come across a blowout call 911 or your local police department.
If you come across crews fixing one, authorities want to remind you of the "move over law." If you see police, emergency responders, or road crews on the side of the road - the law requires you change lanes to give the work vehicle more space, or if you can't do that, you have to slow down.