HANOVER — With warm days invading the middle of February, Upper Valley towns are planning to post their seasonally treacherous roads earlier than usual.

Among the communities that will begin prohibiting vehicles over six tons from driving on some or all roads this week are Hanover, Enfield, Lyme, Norwich and Lebanon, which will post 22 of the city’s roads.

“It’s definitely a decision to go this early,” Enfield’s Director of Public Works Jim Taylor said. “But it’s a necessary one this year.”

Enfield posted all of its town-maintained roads on Wednesday.

As gravel roads start to thaw, water “bleeds” from the ground, and minor rutting might occur.

“If it thaws and stays thawed for two or three days in a row, where it’s going to be above freezing, you start to think about it,” Taylor said.

He was going to wait until Friday to post, but the warm week of weather, with temperatures in the 50s on Thursday, prompted him to go ahead and make the call.

A more mathematical approach to determine when to post the roads, having to do with calculating the number of cooling and heating days since the start of the winter season, is an option too.

But it’s “a lot of work,” Hanover’s Director of Public Works Peter Kulbacki said. He argues that it’s easier to just look at what’s right in front of you: the weather forecast and the roads themselves.

Hanover officials posted the town’s roads on Wednesday. Typically, Hanover doesn’t post until after March 1, but it’s been getting earlier and earlier each year, he said.

That could bode well for the state of the roads a bit later, as winter ends. An early thaw, and even a bit of early mud, could signify an easier mud season, at least more so than last year’s, he said. With few persistent stretches of deep cold so far this winter, the frost is unlikely to have penetrated as deep into the soil as usual. The thaw in the spring might not be as dramatic, Kulbacki said.

But even the threat of another mud season as destructive as last year’s — which saw one Thetford Elementary student riding her mule to school over closed roads — persuaded Thetford’s Department of Public Works to switch to a new road grading material this year in advance of the spring. But sharper rocks in the material prompted a storm of complaints from residents with flat tires. The town applied sand again in late January.

Thetford’s roads are posted at the “blessing” of the Selectboard, so posting this year will have to wait until after the board’s Feb. 27 meeting, Town Manager Bryan Gazda said.

“But the highway foreman did a road check this morning just with the warm weather and the rain that did come,” Gazda said. “A couple spots they went out and fixed, but apart from that our roads are holding up well.”

Gazda comes from upstate New York, where the backcountry roads are made from a more “impervious material,” he said.

“It’s been quite the shock to be out here these past couple years and see what it takes to maintain these gravel roads.”

Towns do their best to work with people who need to use the roads for jobs and businesses, Enfield’s Taylor said.

“If we get a stretch where it freezes back up again, we try to open them so people can service dumpsters, pull out logs, pour out concrete. Whatever they need to do,” he said.

At the Oak Hill site of the Dartmouth Cross Country Ski Center in Hanover, a logging project to expand the area’s trails and install snowmaking equipment has had to adapt. Whyte’s Logging and Contract Cutting secures special permission from Hanover’s Public Works Department to drive its equipment on town roads when conditions allow.

Abiding by their road permits, the crew has been starting at 2 a.m., when the roads are frozen, and working seven days a week to get the project finished.

“I’ve been logging my whole life,” said John Whyte, the company’s owner. “But I’ve never encountered weather like this.”

To make it through the season, Whyte relies on the understanding of landowners and town administrators.

“And of course, I rely on my guys” to keep things moving, he said.

The loggers’ circumstances in the woods will improve in the spring, when trees once again start sucking water out of the drenched ground to feed their budding leaves. A drier forest floor is less sensitive to disturbance from logging — and Whyte is sensitive to disturbance.

“So we’re kind of in a pickle until the leaves are back on those trees,” Whyte said.

Frances Mize is a Report for America corps member. She can be reached at fmize@vnews.com or 603-727-3242.

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