On Monday, Feb. 26, N.H. Department of Transportation began posting state highways, limiting heavy trucks on roads to reduce breakup of pavement from frost heaves. Those nasty bumps are created when water freezes and thaws in a warm/cold cycle, the same pattern that breaks up frozen ground to create mud season on dirt roads.
Last year, posting was done on Feb. 17, the earliest on record, as I noted at the time. The last week of February is historically early – second week of March is the average – but there have been three other times since records began in 2005 that it happened in February.
We went hiking in the Whites last weekend to get some deep snow – up the Kinsman Pond Trail – and were appalled at how little snow is on the ground in the valleys, even in Franconia Notch.
The maximum allowable vehicular weight posted sections of State highways is 30,000 pounds gross weight, or the cumulative width in inches of all tires contacting the road surface multiplied by 300, whichever is less. Under State law (Section 236:3-a), trucks carrying home heating oil, processed milk products, maple sap, and septic pumper trucks are exempted from seasonal bans with the approval of NHDOT District Engineers.
Affected roads can be found on the Web at https://newengland511.org/ under the top banner “Trucking- New Hampshire- Seasonal Posting.”
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