It could be several weeks before the City can smother their pothole issues.

The sudden shift last week from winter conditions to springtime temperatures has left oodles of erosion issues for motorists in Swift Current to dodge in the meantime.

"Typically the water will run in through the cracks in the pavement and the cracks are because the street is quite cold and the cracks are wide," Mitch Minken, Swift Current's general manager of infrastructure and operations, explained. "Water starts to get into those cracks, gets under the pavement and as the cars run over them the pavement breaks away and the pothole is created."

City crews have already begun working on the roadway trouble but according to Minken, the irritant will continue to reappear until warmer weather throughout the overnight period is consistent. The ideal solution to fixing potholes requires them to be dried out allowing workers to apply a tack coat so their hot mix can adhere to the existing pavement.

"Now we don't have a dry surface, it's still frozen, so it's not warm, we don't have the availability of any hot mix or tack coat at this time," he said. "We're kind of forced to use what we have as availability, we use a cold mix which is an asphalt mix. We try to dry the hole out as best we can and warm it up a bit and try to get that to stick. Unfortunately in a lot of cases it doesn't last for very long, a few vehicles running over it will pound it out and we start the cycle all over again."

The City expects pavers to be up and running in about a month which will significantly help negate the mess.

Swift Current has budgeted $750,000 for their annual paving rehabilitation program in 2022, although no indication on which streets they'll elect to tackle has been made yet.

"I don't have any other major concerns other than streets," Swift Current Mayor Al Bridal said. "All municipalities with paved roads all across North America, we have huge issues with keeping our paved roads and sidewalks up. We keep fixing and replacing this but we have one hundred and some kilometres of paved streets in town and we maybe do a mile a year... We will just keep patching that, that's my only concern."

North Service Road from Central Avenue to Memorial Drive is a separate line in the City's budget pegged at $200,000 for upgrades.

And surface replacement on 10th Avenue Northeast in the 800 block from North Hill Drive to George Street is also scheduled.