Scranton Asphalt by the Numbers: Freeze-Thaw, Snowfall and Mine Subsidence

Last reviewed 2026-07-25. Journalists, researchers, and community groups are welcome to cite any figure on this page with attribution and a link.

Almost every claim made about asphalt maintenance in northeastern Pennsylvania rests on two things that are published and checkable: how the weather behaves at the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton airport, and how the Commonwealth prices and limits mine subsidence coverage. This page collects those figures with the source for each one. Nothing here is estimated, interpolated or recalled from memory. Where the public record does not answer a question people commonly ask about pavement, the last section says so rather than filling the gap with something that sounds right.

One naming note, because it trips people up constantly. The long-running climate station for this valley is listed as AVOCA, PA in the National Centers for Environmental Information tables. That is Wilkes-Barre/Scranton International Airport, station 14777, sitting on the valley floor between Scranton and Pittston. Searching those same tables for Scranton returns nothing. Two different periods appear below: the daily maximum and minimum normals cover 1991 through 2020, while the day-count and snowfall tables cover January 1949 through December 2023.

How cold does the Scranton valley actually get?

The number that matters for pavement is not the average temperature but the count of days that cross freezing. At Avoca that count is 124 a year. What makes those days destructive is visible in the two normal columns beside them. In December, January, February and March, the normal daily maximum sits above 32 degrees while the normal daily minimum sits below it. A typical winter day in this valley thaws the pavement surface and then refreezes it overnight. That is a freeze-thaw cycle, and it runs for roughly four straight months.

January is the hardest month by both measures, with a normal daily maximum of 35.7 degrees, a normal daily minimum of 20.3, and 27 days at or below freezing. February is close behind at 24 days. But the shoulder months deserve attention too. March still records 21 days at or below freezing while its normal daily maximum climbs to 47.6, which is the widest daily spread on the table. That March swing is why crack filling ahead of the spring sealcoating season matters more here than the raw snowfall total on its own would suggest.

How much snow and rain does the pavement take?

Avoca averages 43.5 inches of snow a year. January and February carry most of it at 10.9 and 10.4 inches, with March close behind at 8.6 and December at 8.2. November adds 3.3. May and October register only a trace in the long-term record, and June through September are flat zeros. That produces a snow season that realistically runs from November into April, which brackets the plow, shovel and de-icer exposure a driveway surface has to absorb every year.

Precipitation frequency is the quieter number and arguably the more important one for asphalt. The Avoca record shows 138 days a year with at least a hundredth of an inch, distributed remarkably evenly: no month drops below 10 days and none exceeds 13. Asphalt is not damaged by a single storm. It is damaged by water having a way in and a reason to keep cycling through. A surface that gets wet roughly every third day, year round, has very little drying time between events, and an open crack never really gets a chance to dry out.

What does Pennsylvania charge for mine subsidence coverage?

The Department of Environmental Protection states that damage due to mine subsidence or mine water breakouts is usually not covered by a homeowner's insurance policy. That is why the Commonwealth sells its own. Mine subsidence coverage is available from $5,000 to $1,000,000. Residential coverage is priced at about 27 cents for every $1,000 of coverage, which puts $150,000 of protection at $41.25 a year. DEP gives an average policy of $160,000 at $43.75 a year, or about $3.65 a month.

Those are unusually low numbers for property insurance, and the reason is that the program is run by the Commonwealth rather than by a carrier pricing for profit. DEP publishes a program total of over $47 million paid out in homeowner claims. For a property in the Lackawanna valley, where a great deal of the developed ground sits above abandoned anthracite workings, the cost of finding out whether you are eligible is a phone call and the cost of coverage itself is less than most households spend on a tank of gas in a year.

Does that coverage actually pay for a cracked driveway?

This is where the fine print matters, and it is the single most useful thing on this page for a homeowner weighing pavement spending. DEP defines appurtenances as fences, retaining walls, paved or improved patios, walks, driveways, and in-ground swimming pools. Damage to appurtenances is limited to 10 percent of the coverage amount, and it is covered only if the insured structure is damaged by the same event. Both halves of that sentence carry weight, and the second half is the one people miss.

Read the condition carefully. A driveway that cracks and steps while the house above it stays square is not, on those terms, a payable loss. The 10 percent cap bites as well: applied to the $150,000 policy DEP uses as its example, the ceiling on all appurtenances combined works out to $15,000, and a driveway shares that ceiling with the walk, the patio, the retaining wall and the fence. Anyone in the anthracite region whose main exposure is paved area rather than structure should understand both limits before assuming the paving is protected.

What do these numbers not tell you?

Three limits are worth stating plainly. First, the 124-day figure counts days with a minimum at or below 32 degrees. It is not a count of freeze-thaw cycles. A cycle requires the temperature to cross freezing in both directions, and the comparative climatic data tables do not publish a cycle count for any station. The 124 figure is a floor for how often freezing occurred, not a measure of how often a pavement surface went through the complete cycle that opens a crack.

Second, these are air temperatures measured at standard instrument height at an airport on the valley floor. Dark asphalt in direct sun runs well above air temperature, and a clear driveway surface radiating heat on a still night runs below it. The record is a reliable guide to the pattern and a poor proxy for what any specific slab experienced. Elevation compounds the gap: Clarks Summit on the Abington plateau and the Montage side of Moosic both sit meaningfully higher than the Avoca station on the valley floor.

Third, the two data periods are not the same. The daily maximum and minimum normals cover 1991 through 2020. The day counts and the snowfall means cover January 1949 through December 2023, a seventy-five-year record. Comparing a thirty-year normal against a long-record mean is legitimate for describing the general character of a climate but not for claiming a trend. If you need a trend, the underlying station data is available and the periods have to be matched first.

Sources & Methodology

Every figure above was taken from the primary sources below (accessed 2026-07-25). Where a number is derived (arithmetic on published figures) or covers a broader period or area, the text says so.

1. NOAA NCEI Comparative Climatic Data - Days With Minimum Temperature 32F or Below — Monthly and annual counts of days with a minimum temperature of 32 degrees or below for AVOCA, PA, period of record January 1949 through December 2023. Source of the 124-day annual figure and the freezing-days column in the temperature table.
2. NOAA NCEI Comparative Climatic Data - Mean Snowfall — Mean monthly and annual snowfall in inches for AVOCA, PA, 1949 through 2023. Source of the 43.5-inch annual average and every monthly snowfall value shown here.
3. NOAA NCEI Comparative Climatic Data - Normal Daily Maximum Temperature — Normal daily maximum temperature by month, 1991 to 2020, for AVOCA, PA under station USW00014777. Source of the 35.7 degree January maximum and the maximum column in the temperature table.
4. NOAA NCEI Comparative Climatic Data - Normal Daily Minimum Temperature — Normal daily minimum temperature by month, 1991 to 2020, for AVOCA, PA under station USW00014777. Source of the 20.3 degree January minimum and the minimum column in the temperature table.
5. NOAA NCEI Comparative Climatic Data - Days With Precipitation 0.01 Inch or More — Monthly and annual counts of days with at least 0.01 inch of precipitation for AVOCA, PA, 1949 through 2023. Source of the 138-day annual figure and the precipitation column.
6. Pennsylvania DEP - Mine Subsidence Insurance — Coverage range, the published residential rate, the $41.25 and $43.75 premium examples, the appurtenance definition and 10 percent cap, and the statement that homeowner policies usually exclude mine subsidence.
7. NOAA NCEI - Comparative Climatic Data product page — Index listing every comparative climatic data table used on this page and the station identifiers, including AVOCA, PA for the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton International Airport record.