Coolant gush after deep snow--magic self fix?

[BigPemby]

The snow was almost knee deep. The gap between the plowed drive and the pole barn was about 50'. No problem for me I thought. Good tires, lots of experience, etc. It was no problem indeed. Except I noticed my 2003 Explorer 4.6 was gushing coolant from several small places but mostly right by the driver side cat/tcase area. I shut it off to avoid pumping it empty. It stopped dripping. My buddy's heated garage is 1/4 mile away. I could make that easy without over heating. I started it up and there was no leak. The melting snow was still packed with green (which I removed) but no new coolant leaked. I looked and looked and couldn't find where that coolant had come from. I had little choice but to finish my journey by adding another 200 miles today. No problems at all. Is there a relief valve buried somewhere that I smacked with snow? It reset to closed after I shut it off??? Am I going crazy???

 

[Kiliona]

I recently discovered I needed a new thermostat last week when on the coldest day of the year so far my car overheated. The cold caused the thermostat to be a little sticky.

Are you sure you didn't just overheat and spit some coolant out of the overflow? Could be caused by a sticky (but not completely stuck) thermostat, or the coolant being overfilled or something.

Did you happen to see your temp gauge before it happened? my bets are you overheated and the thermostats to blame, but I might just have a bit of tunnel vision since that happened to me.