The article mentioned a section "buckled" - this is the more likely outcome. When designing roads/runways, engineers design for the most likely thermal range. This is then used to determine how much expansion to account for. You'll see this most commonly on bridges, with sections of "teeth" that allow for large expansion/contraction ranges, since the bridge can't expand in the same way a ground road can.

In this case, its likely more a matter of runways needing more precision, and therefore the design allowance on the range of extreme temps being much lower. I'm sure a civil engineer could explain better.