Mud season

Dirt roads and paths become muddy because the deeply frozen ground thaws from the surface down as the air temperature warms above freezing.

One report concluded that the cost of re-engineering dirt roads so that they would remain passable during mud season in the state of Vermont could run as high as $140,000 per mile ($87,000/km).

For the Woods Cree of Northern Saskatchewan this occurred in roughly May and June on the English calendar before the effects of recent climate change.

[10] The Rasputitsa in Russian (literally "season of bad roads"[11]), or Bezdorizhzhya in Ukrainian,[12] is a term for the mud season that occurs in various rural areas of Eastern Europe,[12] when the rapid snowmelt or thawing of frozen ground combined with wet weather in Spring, or heavy rains in the Autumn,[11][13] lead to muddy conditions that make travel on unpaved roads problematic and even treacherous.

[11][13] Rasputitsa has repeatedly "rescued" Russia during wars by causing enemy vehicles and artillery pieces to become mired in the mud, and has been credited, alongside the general conditions of winter, with incumbering both the military campaigns of Napoleon and Hitler in the 20th century, as well as Putin in his 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

[15] When Russia crossed the border, many of its mobile units found themselves stranded in fields and limited to major roads, where resistance and logistical issues significantly slowed the advance toward Kyiv and elsewhere.

[16][17][18] In Maine, Vermont, upstate New York, and New Hampshire, the phrase "mud season" can be used as a shorthand reference to the vicissitudes and peculiarities of life in the region.