WAUSAU, WI (WSAU-WAOW) – The literal bumps in the road, potholes, are here.
“Sadly, there’s no cure outcome when it comes to temporary patching a pothole,” Chad Abbiehl, Public Works Supervisor for the City of Wausau, told WAOW-TV.
There’s a long process involved in getting things taken care of, that start around this time. “We try putting in cold mix now because plants are not available right now to run hot mix so it’s just a temporary patch for now. In the summertime they’ll come in and pave the areas out and put hot mix back inside of it,” Abbiehl said.
Wausau Public Works crews are busy prepping that cold mix, but if you see it on the road and drive over it, it’s possible, it’ll get caught in your tires.
“If you start to notice kind of a thumping or one of those feelings that you get in your car, it could be that your tire actually picked up a chunk of that fresh asphalt patch,” said Kent Olson, the president of Olson Tire & Auto Service in Wausau.
That material may not do significant damage to your car, but driving over un-treated potholes could, in part because of the modern design of most tires.
Also, tires often may not show they’ve been damaged unless you look closely. “When you’re washing your car, if you’re noticing a bulge that comes to the outside, that indicates an external bulge that there’s been damage to the liner of the tire,” Olson said.
Meanwhile, as more potholes continue to show themselves, Abbiehl is encouraging people to be patient. “We try to do the main [roads] in Wausau first and then we do the side streets, and sometimes the main [roads] takes 3-4 days, then it might take that fourth, fifth day for us to get there,” he said, referring to requests for residential areas.
If you see a pothole that you feel is worth getting looked at, there is a proper channel to send that message. In Wausau, the city’s pothole hotline is 715-261-6960.
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