Extreme heat can cause all sorts of problems for drivers. If your car’s air-conditioning is broken, for example, you are going to sweat. The heat in the UK, in particular across the summer, has been horrible, so much so that roads have actually begun to buckle, crack, and melt.
Reports from various media outlets such as the BBC and The Energy Mix have reported on how British roads have taken a massive beating, and that has extended to other parts of the world too. Canada and America have suffered due to the heat.
The UK in particular has struggled. Much of its infrastructure is not built to deal with the incredible heat, with summers typically only having a handful of days that are extremely hot. Thanks to climate change, this year was particularly bad, and it saw little to no rainfall from May right up until August, causing a drought.
Things had become so bad in the UK that vehicles usually only seen in the winter had to be deployed to try and protect the road surfaces. Roads cracking and melting are a huge problem for those driving over them. If the damage is significant enough, it can force roads to close, or perhaps damage the cars travelling over them if they remain open. It really has been a summer of discontent.
How Bad Has It Been for Roads in the UK?
Reports from the West Midlands in the UK detailed just how bad it had got in that part of the country. Asphalt had been melting across the summer, causing all sorts of problems. It got so bad that towns and councils were forced to deploy gritters, vehicles usually used to spread salt on the roads during the winter to help drivers navigate tricky road conditions.
Road surfaces could reach up to 50 degrees Celsius in the heat, which is roughly 122 degrees Fahrenheit. Gritter lorries have been used to spread granite dust and crushed stone onto the roads to help protect them. This can help to mop up leaking bitumen, stabilize the road surface, and stop it from becoming slippery. Any slippery road surface, be it in the heat or the wet, can of course lead to accidents as drivers skate off the road.
Richard Fenwick, director of highways at Warwickshire County Council, said that reports from the public had been crucial to help combat the issue. The roads deemed to have “fattened out,” with a broken surface, are those where gritters are deployed. Roads had simply absorbed the sun’s heat during the day, with it then released at night, which contributed to some of the higher nighttime temperatures residents experienced.
America and Canada Have Suffered From the Extreme Heat
It isn’t just in the UK where the road surfaces have been a problem. Winnipeg in Manitoba, Canada, has seen many of its road surfaces buckle. One resident, Garth Thomson, told CBC News that his 2011 Ford Mustang took a beating after it hit large fragments of concrete that were in his path. This happened on Winnipeg’s Perimeter Highway in July, which had suffered a lot of damage thanks to the heat.
Greenville, Texas, also saw some significant damage to its roads in the July heat. A stretch of U.S. Highway 69 actually exploded at a pavement joint, having basked in heat of up to 38 degrees Celsius, or roughly 100 degrees Fahrenheit. This created a sharp ramp that led to a nearly two-foot fall. Footage seen above showed a black pickup truck catch some air as it hit the damaged bit of road at around 31mph, or 50km/h.