Frost heaves and ice dams are nature’s way of saying, “get the fuck out of here or I’ll mess you up!” Very successful threat, that. Our hubris shatters pretty fast as we swerve to avoid a bump that wasn’t there when we drove into our driveway a mere fourteen hours ago and almost end up taking out our neighbor. Or as we curse the pothole that just swallowed the right front wheel of the new Audi. Guess the wheel will be newer than the car from here on.

The freeze-thaw cycle and other amazing miracles of water are hitting us hard this year.

The ice dam does what isn’t supposed to happen by walking water up the roof against gravity until it gets past the aptly-named but usually only three feet tall rubberized “ice and water barrier” and very easily finds a way underneath roof shingles, which count on water running downhill to keep it out. It’s all about how we try to get away with as little and as cheap a roof covering as we can: if you have a metal roof, it’s not as likely to happen. Shingles: not such a great idea in New England, really.

The trick of smuggling water past the checkpoint is done with repeated freeze-thaw cycles. It is winter and snow is camping out on your roof but you are cold and turn on the heat and now your house lets go of warm air through that roof: the bottom layer melts and runs down. At the edge, it meets the edge: cold air, no more heat from the house, combined with a nice slowing-down moment to gather itself into a drop to drip off. Bingo! One miniscule popsicle. All the next one needs to do is hold on for fear of falling off.

Repeat.

Now you have a nice dam of ice at the bottom of your roof that slowly walks up the roof as water gathers behind, slows down, and freezes. Do this enough and you’re way more than 3 feet up. Add a nice sunny day with lotsa melt and the lake of new melt coming down the roof spills onto your living room couch. Or your bed if it has its druthers.

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Frost heaves and potholes are similarly a combo of our cheap ways of road making and the physical properties of water. It’s a nice cold winter good for skiing and the asphalt and ground beneath it freeze solid. Add sunlight in spring: nice black asphalt heats up in no time and melts the top layer of ice below it. It can’t get away because the ground beneath is frozen. Now you have a lovely little lake sitting below the asphalt and on top of the soil.

It isn’t spring yet so the temps dip deep that night and now the real miracle comes into play: water suddenly expands when it freezes (most other things contract) by way of building phantasmagoric crystal palaces. By almost10%. Enough power to rip steel. Definitely more than Schwarzenegger. (If this reminds you of the bottle of Champagne you tried to chill at the last minute last New Year’s that you forgot in the freezer because the guests suddenly left at twenty after twelve and that you are still trying to scrape off the packages of chicken and the peas from last year’s garden: it should.)

“Pop” says the asphalt since the ground below won’t budge as it is already frozen. Add 5 cars crossing at any speed, the cold and brittle asphalt breaks and voila, you have a pothole. How large depends on the laziness of the road bed building that happened below it. If you’re lucky it’s not big enough to take your car. If we still built our roads of granite blocks this wouldn’t happen though other stuff would. Besides, those blocks are not too great for the Audi’s wheels either.

You’re in good company if you feel you are losing the fight. The freeze thaw cycle also took the Appalachians down a peg or two from Alp-size to Mount Greylock: majestic but humble. Implacable and foreboding if you’re Melville and imagining a whale in the view from your porch. Either way, that process is called erosion. Potholes: erosion on meth.

I walked along the road to see what was doing with the snow banks and the
frozen mud. Here are some crystal palaces and phantasmagoric shapes.