It doesn't need to freeze to find potholes. Here in Baja California it has never dropped to freezing temperatures in all the history of weather data. However, when it rains, downtown paved roads are chuck full of potholes the following week.
Maybe the fact there are no storm drains here compounds the problem? I don't know much about the science of potholes except they are a pain in the ***. Many of the downtown streets are now being re-paved in concrete, which seems to eliminated the pothole problem, at least for awhile.
