A photo of the damage on the Mt. Washington Auto Road.Photo: Mt. Washington Auto Road
MT. WASHINGTON, N.H. (WBZ NewsRadio) — The iconic Mount Washington Auto Road is doing its best swiss-cheese impression. Massive spring flooding wiped out sections of the road on Monday when rain and snow pounded the mountain.
Sinkholes the size of sedans swallowed up big patches of asphalt. Parts of the road were crumbled like wet tissue. The affected area is Six Mile Park, a lookout section about a mile and a half from the famed mountain's summit. The mountain received more than three inches of precipitation on Monday.
Meghan Moody Schwartz is a marketing manager for the Auto Road. She told WBZ NewsRadio the damage on the road isn't unprecedented.
"I know that this has happened before, maybe not to this extent. It's fair to say this does happen, though maybe this example is a little more extreme," she said.
Usually, runoff water goes through culverts in the road, down the mountain. There was so much this time that it began pouring over the asphalt, weakening it.
Schwartz said this wouldn't substantially derail the summer tourist season. Repairs are set to be finished sometime in mid-may, though Schwartz pointed out that more of the mountain's notoriously-unpredictable weather could postpone them.
"At Mt. Washington, we always have to say 'weather permitting,'" she said.
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