Wyoming Crews Switch Gears To Fix Potholes This Winter

WYDOT Crews Trade Snowplows for Potholes in a Surprisingly Mild Winter

So far, Wyoming’s winter has been more bark than bite—and that’s changing the game for WYDOT maintenance crews.

With fewer major snowstorms to battle, plow drivers are spending less time clearing highways and more time tackling the unglamorous, never-ending grind of road upkeep. Think potholes, busted guardrails, windblown signs, and miles of fence that need constant attention.

In this week’s WYDOT Report, officials say the quiet winter has given crews a rare chance to focus on the kind of work most drivers never notice—until it doesn’t get done.

“We do a lot of fence maintenance,” said WYDOT heavy equipment operator Brad Parsons. “We’ve got 208 miles of right-of-way fence to take care of—changing broken posts, fixing wires, re-stapling everything.”

And in Wyoming, even fences have enemies.

Crews use tractors to clear out tumbleweeds that pile up along highways, because when those build up, they turn into snow-drift magnets later in the season.

The state’s trademark wind has also kept maintenance teams busy.

“We’ve had a lot of signs blown over and broken,” Parsons said. “We’re out repairing signs, fixing guardrails, and dealing with erosion where the shoulders of the roads get chewed up.”

Even without big storms, winter still beats up pavement. The daily freeze-and-thaw cycle is brutal on roads—and that means potholes.

“In the wintertime, most of our maintenance is fixing potholes,” Parsons said. “With the thawing and freezing every day, they just keep getting bigger. We’re constantly repairing them on the interstate and side streets.”

So while the snowplows may be getting a break, WYDOT isn’t exactly kicking back.

Crews are using the downtime to keep equipment ready for when Wyoming’s weather inevitably flips the script.

“We keep our trucks in good shape,” Parsons said. “They’re built to handle extreme weather, and we make sure they’re ready to go when the snow and ice show up.”

In other words: just because this winter’s been calm doesn’t mean WYDOT is. The work never really stops—it just changes shape.