Temperatures in the 40s and 50s, pounding rain and the deep freeze that’s bound to follow: Welcome to frost heave and pothole hell.

With the state deferring $150 million in road and bridge improvements because of funding shortfalls and price hikes, does this mean regular road maintenance will be shelved and your best bet is to buy that Hummer to negotiate the road into town?

Not quite, Department of Transportation officials said this week.

But the weather has and will take its toll.

Brian Burne, DOT’s state highway maintenance engineer, said Wednesday that the $1.8 million his department has spent to date from the “pothole” account is far ahead of what is normally spent by this point.

Last year, the state had spent $1.1 million by mid-January.

“Our patching expenses are definitely going to be higher,” he said.

And the project deferrals will likely mean – at least in some cases – more work when the repair and reconstruction do finally get under way.

“It will affect us, and we’ll definitely have to do more of those roads than we would have,” Burne said.

Case in point: U.S. Route 2 between Hermon and Newport.

It doesn’t take much prodding to get Hermon Town Manager Clint Deschene wound up about the status of Route 2, which was slated for resurfacing six years ago but is on hold as part of the $150 million DOT deferral.

“Route 2 is beyond repair from Hermon all the way to Newport. It’s falling apart in front of our faces,” Deschene said.

DOT says the project may get under way in 2007 or 2008.

Deschene also disagrees with DOT’s plan to just resurface the road. By the time the work begins, he believes, a complete reconstruction will be needed.

“We’ve got a lot of potholes,” and the pavement is crumbling in places, especially on the shoulders, he said.

It’s not just in Hermon.

“Newport’s got just as many problems,” he said.

DOT’s Burne concedes the state probably will have to spend more when it does get around to fixing Route 2 than it would have if the work were done now.

Deschene said the state should not be bound by financial constraints in this situation.

“If a road needs to be fixed, it has to be fixed,” he said.

“Now we’re hitting a real bad winter and it’s getting worse,” Deschene said.

The DOT does not dispute Deschene’s assessment of the situation.

“What makes a pothole is basically traffic and water,” Burne said. “We’ve had plenty of both.”

Pothole patrol usually gets under way in earnest in late winter and early spring, he said, as the frost retreats from roadbeds – unevenly – and the weight of a vehicle tire depresses and cracks apart paving material where the subsurface gravel is soft.

“Saturated soils lose strength,” he said.

While the weather this year may be a friend to household heating bills, it has been an enemy to roads.

“It’s really an odd year,” Burne said.

Pothole eat your tire? Options are limited

A municipality has 24 hours to get a pothole filled on a local road or risk paying the bill for that damaged tire, wheel or shock absorber.

But the state, under its immunity from damage lawsuits, does not have to compensate a driver for damage caused by a road crater.

Jim Smith of the state Department of Transportation’s legal division said if a driver notifies a town or city about a pothole or road hazard, and 24 hours or more later a car is damaged from striking the hazard, the driver has grounds to seek compensation.

Exceptions to the rule are if the defect arises out of construction, repair or street cleaning, Smith said. The person complaining about damage likely would have to show negligence on the part of the municipality, he added.

State law covering municipal responsibility for road hazards is in MRSA 23, section 3655. The state’s immunity to such actions can be found in MRSA 14, sections 8101 and 8104-A.