Why roads in the Pacific Northwest buckled under extreme heat
A road that buckled in the recent heat. | Washington State Department of Transportation North via Twitter During last weekend's deadly heat wave, some roads in the Pacific Northwest buckled. Workers ventured out in blistering conditions to put cracked concrete and asphalt byways back together. Steel drawbridges were doused with water to make sure they wouldn't swell shut under the oppressive heat.
The heat dome that sat over the region provided a brutal stress test of its roadways, some of which couldn't withstand multiple days of record-breaking temperatures. It's something that's happened before, in Washington, Wisconsin, South Dakota, and anywhere else experiencing extreme heatwaves.
Here's an example of how heat is causing some road pavement to buckle. Our crews are hard at work this morning fixing SR 544 in Whatcom County, trying to...