Temp Warning

I have a 2007 and I have seen the dropdown, but have never seen the snowflake. At the time, couldn't figure out why it would suddenly do that!

Good to know it wasn't a glitch, though doesn't seem very useful......

 

can someone post a pic of what it looks like?

 

You'll just didn't go back a day or so to my "snowflake" post (lol). It's going to take someone with a really quick camera to get a pic of it (the sneaky little devil)!

http://priuschat.com/forums/showthread.php?t=40282

 

on my 04, i just thought of it as a christmas decoration so i was ok with it...but then again, in my neighborhood, it does not come on for any length of time...about half of the mornings...but that was eliminated by blocking my grill which makes the thermometer inaccurate and thus... no snowflake

 

I can confirm what johnny describes - the temperature warning only comes on when the temperature moves down past 37F (or in my case, 3C). If the temperature is already below that when the car starts, no warning will appear.

Reproducing it should be easy if you live in a cold enough climate and have access to a garage. Simply park the car in the garage overnight, then start it up in the morning and take it outside. Sit & wait until the temperature sinks below 37F and you should see it drop down from the top of the screen.

I see it regularly since most times I park the car in the garage at night.

 

The 06 and newer cars will only flash a drop-down message when it suddenly becomes cold enough for black ice and constant engine run: it says "Outside temp 37F" or something like that, and just drops down on the screen momentarily before receding away. But alas; it's already been said

 

weird that it would not display the warning on startup when it realizes the temp has already reached that point...

 

YAY!!! I've contributed something to the board!!! I feel smart now.

 

My 2004 shows an idealized icon, intended to represent a snowflake, though it is sufficiently unrealistic that in the early days an occasional newbie would post, asking what it was. It lights up in the fall, and remains all winter, reminding me that it's cold outside, which I already know and don't like being reminded of. At least I can laugh at it now (a little bit) because after living for 35 years in North Dakota, the cold in Spokane is sort of "cold lite."

 

Not really; the idea is that you were just out in that temperature so your body is probably acutely aware that it's freakin' freezing.

~ dan ~

 

I would think it would make more sense to have it when you are already in those conditions...especially since no one actually knows how to drive in them, the more reminding, the better.

 

You're only saying that because you live on the West Coast. Anyone on the East Coast, in the North-East, or in the mountains is very well aware of how to drive in the super-cold.

~ dan ~

 

so i guess, in its role as a warning indicator, it does well, since its primary role is to advise of changing conditions and not of existing ones

 

That's the way I interpret it. It's the car letting you know operating conditions have changed and the car will be changing some of its running parameters to match. Like an inflection point.

 

37 F. is not "freakin' freezing." 37 F. is lovely. 32 F. is literally the freezing point, but nothing will actually freeze at 32 F. Down around 20 F. is cold, zero F. is "freekin' freezing," and 20 below zero F. is bitterly cold. 40 below zero you don't have to specify F. or C. because minus 40 F. = minus 40 C.

At 37 F. in December I'm dancing, and Jayman would be outside checking to see if you can fry eggs on the sidewalk. (Because if it was 37 F. in Winnipeg in December it would be breaking every record for heat waves.)

But the snowflake and/or text warning is pretty much useless. The intention is that when the outside air temperature is 37 F. it's possible for the road surface to be colder than 32 F. and therefore to present the possibility of ice. But there's nothing magical about 37 F. You could encounter ice on the roadway at an air temperature of 40 F. or you could have dry roads at 20 F., so the snowflake is just as likely to be crying "wolf" when there is no wolf, and sleeping when there is.

As Dave said, it's really just a Christmas decoration that lasts 5 months in the north and never shows up in the south.

 

Funny you should mention that

We got up to +28 F yesterday. Naturally, roads are a mess, but I'm walking around saying "Jacket?! FEH, what jacket!"

I had to remove the upper winter front on my FJ, but it's quite safe to leave the Prius fully covered

It is supposed to cool off by the weekend though.

 

Though I also always enjoy cooler weather, for most of the moderate climates 37F is a pretty cold temperature. I hate waking up on mornings below 45F, but enjoy cold climates like that once my body has switched on. The thing is, I -have- encountered black ice (irreflective ice) at or around that outside temperature. Here where I work I watched a rear-end collision due to dry ice just yesterday; we've had a black ice warning in our announcements all month.

~ dan ~

 

In Southern California it is. Last week, on the way to work, I saw the yellow snow flake for the first time this season. Brrr...