Wow! I think perhaps Jack Frost was listening when my kids wrote persuasive letters begging for snow. We got snow in a big (for us anyway) way. Accumulations varied from a dusting to six and seven inches. We are a bit up above sea level, so we were on the more end of things. However, it was not just the snow that cancelled school today. When we went to bed last night it was snowing beautifully. When we got up this morning it was one big sheet of ice. The highest temp. around here today was only about 28 degrees, so even though it was beautiful and sunny, not much had the chance to melt.
They decided to cancel school for tomorrow at about 5pm today. This is unheard of because officials for our district usually wait for the absolute last moment always hoping for some sort of miraculous heat wave. Even they could see the ice in the streets today. We will pay for this in June when we have to make up the days, but I can't help enjoying the novelty and the time off.
I refuse to set foot in a car (my car is pretty much the worst ice vehicle out there) but many people are happily flying around on the ice. These people are stupid (I've done a fair amount of snow and ice driving so I feel I can say that). The road outside our house is literally an untreated sheet of ice, and yet many different types of cars are just zooming along out there. The news is littered with footage of people spinning out, hitting each other, or just sliding out of control. Snow tires (not to be confused with chains, studs, or ice tires) are not very helpful on ice. Many all-wheel/four wheel drive people are surprised when they slide off the road, but they don't help much if none of your tires have traction. There is no substitution for going slow. If you just don't build up the speed you don't have to find a way (or a wall) to brake it later.
Pics to follow (I hope)
3 comments:
Actually research over the last few years has shown that in almost every situation snow/ice tires perform as well as studded tires. Given how much they damage roads, that may be part of the reason they're illegal in various places. Personnaly, I'd never seen studded tires until moving here. Consider how much ice we get bakc home; some of it inevitably doesn't get salt/sand/chemicals for a few days.
The big difference though is that no-one has snow/ice tires here (which we call winter tires). What they have here is what we call 4 season tires. It's considered stupid back home to drive in winter with 4 season tires. An exception in made for the first year of the tires since they haven't lost enough of their traction yet. Still, most people switch to winter tires in the fall and back to 4 seasons in the spring. It'd be suicide to use summer tires in winter (which I'm sure some seattleite do).
Finally, 4WD vehicles are great but winter tires and smart driving will help you more in such poor conditions (at least I think).
Ari had to take his brother to the airport yesterday morning. On his way home he saw a car merging onto I-90 in front of him, not going fast, spin 540 degrees before coming to a stop.
I've driven old-style studs on snow and ice, new-style (less damaging to roads) on snow and ice, and "winter" tires on snow and ice. In my opinion there is no comparison. Winter tires do great on snow, but they are not helpful when the road is one solid sheet of ice. Old fashioned studs, on the other hand are amazing. They were only ever legal between Nov. and March. My whole point, though, is that people should not get over-confident no matter what they are driving.
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