Statewide Iowa (Radio Iowa) — At least three areas of roadway here in northwest Iowa buckled in the extreme heat this weekend, but the problem wasn’t limited to our area. Buckling was seen all across the state.
Iowa D-O-T assistant director of maintenance, Ken Morrow, says the buckling causes a lot of extra work when high temperatures cause pavement to buckle.
The buckling or blowouts happen when water gets under the pavement and heats up and the steam pushes up the pavement like the top coming off a boiling pan of water. Morrow says they try to prevent this from happening using drains along the roadways.
Morrow says concrete roads are most susceptible to the problem.
Morrow says crews usually come out and push down the buckled concrete and put on a temporary patch to get traffic moving. He says they most often have to come back later and do a full cut of the concrete to fill in where the pavement buckled.
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Original Story posted 5/29/18 2:38pm
Northwest Iowa — The weekend heat wave caused some problems with highways around northwest Iowa.
According to the Sioux County Sheriff’s Office, crews were dispatched to Highway 75, just south of the Highway 10 intersection, west of Orange City, late Friday afternoon, to repair a section of road that had buckled due to the heat.
The heat was also responsible for two other sections of buckled roadway in Sioux County Sunday afternoon. Crews were sent to Highway 18, just east of Garfield Avenue, 2-miles east of Rock Valley, late Sunday afternoon to repair a buckled section of roadway. Then, about 30-minutes later, a buckled section of roadway was reported on Highway 60 near Lily Avenue, or one mile south of Hospers.
Fortunately, there’s been no word of the buckled sections of roadway causing accidents or other damage.
