The Missouri Department of Transportation is patching potholes throughout northwest Missouri after winter weather.

“When you start having a lot of winter weather, in this case even worse, when you have a lot of rain and freezing rain the condition of those roads afterwords from the freeze and thaw creates a lot of potholes,” said Marty Liles, MoDOT Northwest District Maintenance & Traffic Engineer. “As that moisture freezes it expands and as it expands that pressure has to go somewhere so it starts popping out the asphalt and other materials and creating those potholes we see today.”

Liles said crews have been out since Tuesday evaluating pothole locations and working to patch things up after freezing rain moved through the area.

“This past weekend was one of those that’s really hard on our pavements anyway because we had so much moisture that got soaked into the pavement in those cracks and crevasses and then we had a lot of freezing and thawing which takes a toll on our roads,” Liles said. “Anything that we do right now is very difficult to get a permanent fix.  We hope that we can get them to last as a temporary measure until we can get in there and do a more permanent fix.”

Liles said they are out looking for potholes and are also encouraging people to report them.

“It’s just like any other customer concern that we have,” Liles said. “We take those very seriously and we log those in.”

He said people can let them know about potholes on MoDOT roads by calling (888) ASK-MODOT.  CLICK HERE for a link to MoDOT’s website to report a road repair.