Why does a little snow bring half the US to a grinding halt?!

i can't speak for the rest of the country, but something has happened here over the last 20-30 years or so. the plows used to make an appearence every now and again during a storm, and in between, you might have to drive through 2,3,4,5" until the plow came through again. our cars used to be a lot bigger and heavier (although the weight was over the non drive wheels). since the 'blizzard of 78' it's almost impossible to drive in the snow around here. the sanders come out before the first flake comes down, and there are so many plows, your more in danger of getting hit by one than you are of hitting a snowflake. except for the people who insist on driving the exact same way they do on dry pavement. these tend to be drivers of volvo's and 4 wheel drive vehicles. we now have a whole generation who has no idea how to drive in snow. i can't imagine what the amount of salt they are using is doing to the environment and water supply.

 

Experience is the best teacher.

When it only happens two days a year, maybe every third or fourth year, nobody knows how to
deal with it.
Coupled with the fact that there is no road equipment present to help deal with it, it ends up with
inexperienced drivers in the ditch......or worse.

In Atlanta, for instance, THEY don't know how to drive when it's dry.....or in the rain.......
so why should we expect them to wise up suddenly when it snows ????

 

Lack of experience and practice -- people who live in it for several months each year get far more skilled than people who see it just a couple days every third or fifth year.

Lack of preparation and equipment -- it really doesn't pay to put great snow tires on all vehicles, and have thousands of plows and sanding trucks, for something that rarely happens. There are plenty of more common things also fighting for that same budget.

Lack of continuous weather-induced tree pruning -- in real winter climates, the leaves fall early or are taken off by the first snows, and weak branches and trees come down continually but gradually. Areas that rarely see heavy snow have a lot of this weak vegetation build up for years, then get taken down all at once. And with leaves staying on the trees longer, the branches collect more heavy snow.

Ground conditions -- in real winter areas, the ground gets cold, the snow melts from the top down when the sun comes out or warm air pays a visit. Farther south, the ground never really gets cold, so the snow starts (partially) melting from the bottom up, creating a layer of ice on the bottom. This makes for very bad road conditions. Put inexperienced winter drivers on this with their worn year-round tires, and the result is a disaster.

Freezing rain -- similar to above, a cold snap arrives to an area where the ground and trees and roads are still warm just before the snow arrives. So the first stuff is always wet, before the continuing cold air freezes everything into ice. Up north, everything is usually cold before the snow arrives, so it stays light and fluffy and powdery and much easier to handle.

 

The difference is temperature. Very early this morning I was shoveling maybe an inch of snow. The real problem was in the street where the water flowing to the storm drains was freezing. I cleared that ice & slush along with a fair amount of the street beyond the driveway.

Take your Colorado snow driving skills out on the Pennsylvania Turnpike in today's conditions and see if you fare better than those that managed to close the highway for half a day or so. In this country driver training is between poor and nonexistent. Add ignorance to speeding and tailgating and something spectacular is going to happen.

 

In west Michigan we can handle winter blizzards un like The southern states
But we could not handle hurricanes ....

 

We get this all the time here. We get 2 inches of snow and everything grinds to a halt and the Press all compare us to Norway just over the sea and laugh.

But Norway gets 6 months of snow. They use snow or studded tyres. Their airport runways are heated.

We get 2 inches of snow every year or two and every 10 years we get a foot of the stuff. No point investing in significant infrastructure changes or buying hundreds of snowploughs that will only be driven for a couple days every couple years.

Same is why we suffer in 30c heat. Our buildings are designed to keep heat inside, so when it gets hot we suffer. Not everywhere has a/c because again, it's not worth installing for 5 days every couple years.

So I have some sympathy for the Alabama snowplough drivers.

 

I live in Atlanta and you have all heard about us and our .5" of devil's dandruff shutting everything down. I was out in it in my Prius enjoying it because we never get it, helping stranded people get home. The Prius was fantastic, although I'm not an entire moron driver myself. We had 5" of snow a couple weeks ago and some ice and I never once had a hill I couldn't climb with the appropriate momentum. I even pulled a GSP (GA state patrol)car up a small hill. Although I did make some redneck chains for my tires out of nylon rope to do that but it worked great.

I have never been more proud of the Prius, than when I went up a snowy embankment that everyone else couldn't seem to climb to make it out of the hell hole of traffic that was i285. I sat in it for 11hrs before I broke free and got my chance to hit the hill and. Couple people I work with sat there for 23hrs because they couldn't make it.

I wish I had taken a picture of my redneck snow chains I made to pull that cop out it was a thing of beauty...lol

 

When I lived in Southern California in the late 1980s, the freeways would all slow down to 25 - 30 MPH when it rained... it's all relative to the crowd's experience. One time in early 1989(?) there was actual snowfall in the lowlands and Oh My Lordy! yes everything shut right down. The actual snowfall was like, two inches at most. It cleared the smog right out of the Los Angeles basin.

 

I want that to happen again. I would love that.

 

Well now, let's see

1. City stuffed to the gills with cars
2. No infrastructure for winter
3. Herd mentality
4. No Civil planning
5. Inexperienced, normally aggressive drivers
6. Unprepared cars

 

Road safety requires greater following distances for any given speed when roads are wet, and even more space when the roads are snowpacked or icy.

Typical SoCal traffic is already in serious violation of minimum spacing rules when the roads are dry. When foul weather arrives, either most of that traffic must get off the road to allow greater spacing, or traffic must slow down.

When I moved to the urban Puget Sound area from the inland, this quickly became clear. I had been accustomed to driving at or near the speed limit in a lot of rural snow conditions, but with greatly increased car spacing (and winter tires). In Seattle, if the regular commute traffic spread out to safe winter following distances, then the morning commute rush could not be completed before the evening commute rush must begin. The reduced freeway throughput capacity meant that a lot of workers needed to stay home. Even if by some miracle they all could have had decent tires and winter driving skills.

 

I picked up my wife from the airport last week, just as night was falling and snowfall started. I didn't really think much of it until I was on the freeway and could barely see due to glare. I still am not sure why it was so severe, but I exited to city streets so that I could drive *really* slow - and still visibility was horrible. Visibility improved from just about nothing to perhaps 10 feet when I turned off the headlights but left the running lights on. Still too poor to drive, so I stuck my head out the window -- a little better but not much.

I finally stopped at the side of the road and thought a while, wondering where the light for glare was coming from. It finally dawned on me to turn off the MFD in the car. THAT let me see again, and the remainder of the trip was pretty uneventful. If the city has been full of fast moving cars it would not have been pretty.

 

Well, the recent NE snow storm was the 9th largest in National Weather Service recorded history.
I would say about the top 5 worst shoveling snows I've seen.
The Great Lakes are mostly frozen over for the first time since 1994...less lake effect snow.
Lots of Polar Vortex's this year made it really cold down to FL.

And we can't get no credit from the Climate Change folks.
They say record high heat everywhere else.

 

I blame the Weather Channel, as they have recently decided to name all the new winter storms, as if they were tropical cyclones. This decision has frightened everyone even more than usual that watches that stuff. Other than the fact that some local stations and people picking up on the term "Polar Vortex," I see no other weather sources using those new storm names. Winter is supposed to be bad -- that's why they call it Winter.

I'm not saying it hasn't been a bad season, but at my age, I've gone through so much worse in previous decades. Everyone talks about the weather, but nobody ever does anything about it.

 

I'd say the same. Its been generally mild here this winter. But the pictures and descriptions showing up on the news don't appear any worse than what happened frequently when I was younger.

 

You don't have manual headlight adjustment in the US do you? If it's snowing I lower my headlights so they're not shining up into the snow.

Alternatively I turn the headlights off and just use the front fogs because they're much lower. Works a treat

(even our lowest spec Prius come with front and rear fogs as standard - probably for good reason)

 

I do the same here, but others seem to think that you should drive with full lights on or maybe just parking lights! People seem to drive with front fogs on at all the wrong times