Pothole season underway in Chicago area

You can add another season to the winter, spring, summer and fall we enjoy in Chicago: pothole season.

But nobody enjoys that.

We may not like potholes, but we like complaining about them.

"Since the snow has been melting they're getting deeper and deeper. And I'm just going on a roller coaster ride,” said driver Robin Minkins.

Like dandelions in the spring, potholes are popping up everywhere in late winter and some of them are car busters.

Just ask Frank Jackson.

"I struck the pothole, and by the time I saw it I was in it,” he said.

Jackson was among more than a dozen drivers who encountered a monster pothole on I-55 early Tuesday morning that shredded tires and bent rims. Not one, but two blown tires on this car. Jackson is now driving on his spare.

Up until recently it had been a relatively quiet pothole season.

A spokesperson for the city's department of transportation says they've filled about 40-thousand potholes so far this year, which is about 25-thousand fewer than the same time last year

But the recent snowstorm, followed a burst of warm air, has prompted the city to put 30 pothole patching crews on the street when weather permits.

Mechanic Eliot Silverman agrees it's been a pretty easy pothole season up till now. he says he's just now seeing the telltale signs.

"If it's a steel rim it's not hard for us to repair them. Aluminum rims, it's a softer material. Sometimes we can fix them. But if you hit it really hard or it's really deep it'll crack the rim and just has to be replaced,” Silverman said.

A city spokesperson says you can report that big pothole in front of your house by calling 311, or take a picture of it and email it to them. They say it's taking about two days right now after they get those tips to go out and repair the potholes.

The city also offers a pothole tracker website, which is a map showing all the potholes that have been filled over the past seven days.