Frost boils and damage to county roads from last winter are still lingering in Washington County. At Tuesday’s Washington County Board of Supervisors meeting County Engineer Jacob Thorius presented his third quarter secondary roads activity report. He said the department dealt with blowups this spring and is still recovering from last winter’s damage, “We continued to blade and work on gravel roads throughout the summer, and then routine maintenance, also continue to deal with frost boils and damage from last winter and spring. We hauled additional rock on those, and cored out some bad sections, and replaced it with better material. Some of them were still not able to heal. It’s unfortunately going to take time and it’s a continual problem across the state, it’s not a Washington County problem, it’s a State of Iowa problem from last winter.”

He adds the Iowa DOT is working to develop a research project to analyze what caused the extreme frost boils across the state, “The best anybody can really think it was a combination of a variety of things: a very wet spring with a very cold winter with a rapid thaw. So the top layer thawed out very quickly while the ground was frozen six or seven feet deep.” Thorius says counterparts said they were still seeing frost in the ground as late as June and there were a couple of counties in late July and early August that were hauling rock from stockpiles that were still frozen in sections. Thorius explained the excessive moisture, with the freeze and thaw action broke down bonds and created a “perfect storm” for roads. Washington County has started to receive salt for the upcoming winter.