Record-Setting Winter Makes Northern Michigan Roads Unrecognizable After a Spring Thaw

The winter of 2024-2025 brought massive snowstorms to many parts of Northern Michigan. Cities like Gaylord set annual records while storms brought 3-4 feet at once to eastern and central locations in the Upper Peninsula in record snowfall in Sault Ste Marie.

As spring beings to arrive and the snow melts, the backroads in many locations look almost unrecognizable as passable roads.

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One such road that appears little more than mud ruts was shared on social media by the Chippewa County Road Commission. The county, with its seat at Sault Ste Marie, is the northeasternmost parts of the UP.

The image was shared by the county road commission in a posting about the seasonal enforcement of weight restrictions. These restrictions happen annually on both state and county maintained roads and do not allow for heavy loads to use the roads as they recover from winter and the ground thawing.

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The County Road Association of Michigan explains about the seasonal rules:

While roads are concrete and asphalt and look indestructible, they can actually be quite fragile in late winter as frost comes out of the ground. Even strong late-winter sunlight on the dark paved surface has a significant impact on a road.

As frost melts beneath a paved road, the roadbed turns wet and spongy because water is trapped between the pavement and the remaining ice layer beneath. When trucks and heavy equipment travel over a layer of concrete or asphalt that isn’t well supported beneath, lots of permanent cracks can occur.

Commenters on Facebook raised the idea that logging trucks may have used the road pictured. The heavy load could be the cause of the deep ruts.