It’s been a good winter for potholes.

Plentiful precipitation and frequent — often daily — fluctuations between freeze and thaw have provided ideal conditions for minor pavement perforations to multiply and mature into fissures and craters. Combine such weather with a location where drivers have only a couple of entry and exit routes and the results are the sort of road conditions that now confront drivers aboard Marine Corps Base

Quantico.

Just as there is a season for potholes to multiply, there is also a season for repairing them, but that season has not yet come.

“It’s the freeze-thaw cycle that really kills us up here,” said Joe Provenzano, deputy director of the base Installations and Environment Division, noting that most other stateside Marine Corps bases are in warmer climates where freezing conditions are relatively rare.

Every pothole begins as a crack in the asphalt, which can essentially be pried open by water, one of the only substances that expand upon freezing, Provenzano explained.

“Once it gets beneath the asphalt to the base and sub-base of the road, it cavitates underneath the pavement,” he said. “The typical pothole, if you will, is one that gets down to the sub-base, and you get that full-blown pothole.”

In other instances, such as most of the potholes in front of the Davis Center on Russell Road, only the top layer, or “lift,” of pavement is undermined and peels off, creating a shallower depression.

When the fractures spread outward, rather than downward, they can multiply into “alligator cracks,” with a web of crevices shattering the surface of the asphalt.

“All you need is one of those ‘scales’

to pop out, and a pothole starts,” Provenzano said.

High traffic volumes aggravate the effects of winter weather, he said. For example, a project to raise the tarmac level at Marine Corps Air Facility to accommodate new hangars recently generated 35,000 dump truck trips in a single summer. And the road network on the main side of base routes virtually all that traffic onto one primary road loop of Russell and Fuller roads, and Barnett Avenue.

Provenzano said permanent road repairs are usually carried out between April and October because asphalt doesn’t set properly in the cold. Asphalt plants even shut down in the winter because paving can’t be done, he said.

In the meantime, base maintenance crews fill potholes with “cold asphalt,” a material similar to asphalt that can be used in the winter as a temporary fix. However, even a “cold patch” can be problematic in wet, cold weather, because if it’s laid in a wet pothole and the water freezes under it, the patch can pop out.

“We’ll see what we need to do once we’re out of winter, and we’ll do permanent repairs,” Provenzano said, adding that this sort of road work requires a contractor to cut around damaged areas and replace the base and sub-base of the road, as well as the asphalt. It usually means shutting down lanes. “So it’s an expensive proposition to permanently fix potholes.”

Traffic Safety Branch manager Ed Billig said potholes require caution on the part of drivers.

“You just want to be aware of them and avoid them if at all possible, but you want to stay in your lane,” he said. “You don’t ever want to go into oncoming traffic to avoid one, or put anybody else in danger.”

“If somebody sees a pothole anywhere, feel free to report it to the Public Works reception desk, and they’ll note it,” Provenzano said. That number is 703‑784‑2072.

— Writer: mdicicco@quanticosentryonline.com