Winter tires saved the day

All Weather tires have a Rubber compound that stays flexible in the cold (at some sacrifice of tread wear life) so they approach the performance of Winter tires and have the "snowflake" emblem that acknowledges tis fact. Read the reviews of the Michelin Cross Climate 2 that are easily accessed on the web.

JeffD

 

Thanks! I was aware of the Michelin Cross Climate 2's as being both an All-Season and a Winter tire at the same time, but didn't know they were called All-Weather tires.

 

+2

On one hand, I can vouch from personal experience that he is wrong. The family farm's road frequently get conditions that will defeat that Subaru. Or even a fully chained and loaded F-250. Or sometimes (infrequently), even a fully chained Caterpillar road-grader snowplow.


OTOH, for people who stick to well traveled and groomed highways, his statement is a very good approximation of road management here. While WSDOT has a stage for "Chains Required even on AWD/4WD", I've seen it used only very rarely. Usually they just skip that stage and go up one more level to "Road Closed".

Back when forecasts were much less accurate than today and Stevens Pass Ski management had a more laissez-faire style, when the highway conditions were deteriorating badly, they kept the lifts running and let skiers continue to ski in the fantastic new-falling powder. "The DOT will probably get the road re-opened and better plowed later, before closing time". And they did, most of the time. Only twice did we have to stay late then go down the other side, stranded away from home for the night.

These days, with improved forecasting and a more skittish attitude by new ownership (Vail Resorts), they shut down the lifts early and try to push everyone down the hill before the DOT closes the road, or even before 2WDs without chains get trapped. Less hassle for the ski hill, but at a loss of some absolutely prime skiing.

 

Same in Colorado. There's a law for everything to have chains on it, even AWD vehicles with excelent winter tires, but they don't use it often and usually just jump to closed road.

Although personally, if I'm out somewhere and the roads are terrible, I don't wait for the DOT to tell me I need to put chains on, and there's been several times I'm out in the middle of the road that's being closed. And not just because of snow storms. Avalanches, blowing snow and the like can also cause a road to get terrible real fast even if there's a clear sky.

There have been a few times I've passed 4WD trucks that can't get up the pass with my 2WD car with chains.

 

I have a question for those people who live in states that do not plow, salt/sand and require chains. What happens to snow on the road after a storm passes?

If we don't plow and salt the road, our road would be covered with a foot of compacted snow/ice until spring thaw.

 

Where I grew and we used chains more (by choice, not law), the roads did get plowed.

Eventually.

Most of the roads people actually used in winter, also melted out repeatedly through the winter. It wasn't like the more northern areas where roads stay covered all winter.

There were other roads, usually at higher elevation, that didn't melt out until spring. But they were not used in winter, except possibly by snowmobiles.

 

There is even a thread here for that:

PriusChat: Death by GPS

 

Well, in Alaska we never salted. Too cold for any real effect. Ash from the power plant was mixed with river gravel and often spread as traction assistance. (Good business for the windshield shops too.)

We let the roads gain a layer of compacted snow and ice, typically about 4" thick and then we sent a road grader through.

With the right blade and operator, they can clear the road down to pavement in a single pass at about walking speed. They even had bermbuster attachments on the blade so they didn't leave a wall of ice across driveways.

A second crew would chase it with a snowblower, lifting and grinding the chunks into a rotation of dump trucks.

 

So, sounds like in the following states where frequent chain usage is common: Idaho, Montana, Oregon, Washington, and Alaska, at least snow gets plowed eventually. Where I live, I am not even sure how much salt is being mixed, if any, with the sand they spread on the road. I know there are some roads that are open only seasonally and will not allow passage during winter. Not exactly sure if they are some public or all private. Those roads never get plowed.

Even though I live in a rural small incorporated town with a population of ~1500, most of the public roads I regularly drive are plowed during and after each snow. But now come to think of it, I know there are areas in our state that have no municipal gov. From what I just Googled, this area is called an unorganized territory (UT) having no local incorporated municipal government. And UT covers almost half of the land of the state. Not sure if there are any public roads in those areas, but if there are, I don't know how they are being maintained. My guess is that they are maintained by individuals who use that road. Where I live, I see more trucks with snow plow attachments than any other category of cars in winter, so that is not too surprising.

Well, overnight snow has changed to heavy rain early morning. The snow is now incredibly heavy and it won't be blown by the ordinary snow blower I have. The town plow left a wall of soaked snow at the end of our driveway. It is going to be fun manually shoveling that away. @Stevewoods talked about people DYING by driving onto unplowed roads. I just read local news reporting death caused by plowing snow. Yeah, it seems I'm damned if I do and damned if I don't. But if I don't do it now while raining, it will turn to solid ice overnight and will become impossible to remove... Bummer.

 

Um.....it melts?
In some states where Big Ag forces water availability to be a thing, these melting periods actually help keep reservoirs filled.

A Human's super-power is adaptability.
Smart people seem to live in what I like to call the "habitable zones" of the planet.
In the US these areas are roughly bounded by Interstate 40....at least for temperature.
Water availability is a little more complicated, and a different discussion.

Intrepid explorers who venture into the wild frozen wastelands outside the bounds of civilization are either smart enough to adapt or they are edited out of the DNA pool.


'Required?'
Seems to me that some of the low-hanging fruit in increasing the collective intelligence of American drivers (a VERY humble undertaking!!!) would be to REMOVE signs advising that 'chains are required'.....

 

In Dixie, snow leads to a lot of pickups doing donuts and parking in the ditch.

Bob Wilson

 

I've heard stories from rural areas of Pennsylvania where the better funded town will plow right to their border with a poor one, who couldn't plow.

Once went to Centralia on a winter night. Sections of road were covered, and others clear and dry. Had nothing to do with plows or weather.

 

I guess, by your assertion, more than half the population of the US is not smart people. And how about the people of Canada???

Yeah, if you have not lived in the area where the first snow that covers the ground in Nov will not melt until May, then you probably have no idea what this thread is about. Then... I just realized that in ~50 years, New England (except the present coastal communities) would be the most habitable land in the US, according to some climatologists.

New Climate Maps Show a Transformed United States | ProPublica

 

Sounds like parts of New Mexico and Arizona.

Also there are a lot of highways around me in Colorado that are plowed only during the day. After 5PM there are no plows until 7AM. A lot of snow can fall in one night.

 

Rain's good for that too.

Assertion?
Um....yeah.
if you remove satire, and the word 'adaptable' and take the post entirely out of context?
That's pretty much it.

 

Which part?
The varying degrees of town resources, or the coal fire?

 

Towns or outskirts where nobody plows and everyone feels the need to own a AWD with a set of chains, or something to that effect.

 

That happens to the road in front of our house all the time. I live a few miles from the town border. The abutting city (albeit only a population of ~8,000) has more resources than our town. While our town plows once, the city plow goes several times. Consequently, the same stretch of the road on the city side is substantially better maintained during and right after a snowstorm. When I was commuting to work, if substantial snowfall happens overnight, I take a detour through the city, even though that would add almost 10 miles longer to my work.

Also, the frequency of plowing decreases during school vacation periods. During the Christmas vacation, February vacation, and sometimes even Spring break, snow does not get plowed as frequently.