Locally a forecast for a blizzard on Thursdays and extremely cold weather following that such that I don’t think salt on the roads will melt the snow and ice–as I was planning to travel on Saturday. [and the possibility of being stuck in a ditch or a car breakdown in extremely cold weather also bothers me.]
Anyone have any thoughts about this?
Go with the local traffic advice. If they suggest you don’t travel, don’t travel.
A family meal wouldn’t seem like a good enough reason for me if the weather were really bad.
Blizzards are mean business and authorities would prefer it if folks postpone their trips if at all possible.
We drive to Chicago frequently on I196along Lake Michigan where the lake effect snow bands are pretty intense. Add in hurricane force winds and it’s nearly impassable.
Blizzard warnings are a good enough excuse to stay put.
Agreeing with check the local advice, both for where you are and for where you’re going, and if they’re significantly far apart also along the route inbetween.
And remember that there are two issues: one is road conditions, and the other is visibility. I have a relative who drives a 4WD with studded snow tires on it, and arrived somewhat shaken once for a holiday here saying, “I can stay on any road I can see: but there was an area [around the Great Lakes] where I had trouble seeing where the road was.”
For that matter, there’s a third: even if you can stay on the road, that won’t help much if somebody else slides into you.
– around here I would usually expect roads to be passable, if possibly not much fun, by Saturday after a Thursday blizzard; but that’s assuming both that the bad weather actually ended by Friday, and that there isn’t still a lot of wind blowing snow back into the roads and the air.
Whoever you’re going to visit may miss you; but if they miss you because you stay home, they’ll only miss you temporarily. If they miss you because you were in a bad accident trying to get there, they might be missing you permanently.
Without knowing where you live, how far you intend to drive, how skilled & how nervous a driver you are, etc. There’s nothing useful to be said.
It’s certainly safer to stay home. But what are you giving up?
There’s a third issue (at least): other drivers who drive like maniacs in really bad weather.
For what it’s worth, the last report I heard for Chicago is that the event will start thursday afternoon and wrap up sometime saturday morning.
It might be right or wrong, that’s how the weather reports go.
The OP doesn’t really state where the travel might happen, so that’s hard to comment on.
If you’re wondering if it’s safe (by your own standards) to travel, chances are, it isn’t.
This is a biggie to me - you can be the best, most experienced driver on the planet, but all it takes is one moron…
Look at it this way - whatever you’re travelling to/for, is it worth your life? Or the life of the person who gets called out to rescue you from whatever happens? The very fact that there are blizzard conditions would make my decision for me, definitely not worth leaving home.
Remember this same can also be said of a trip to the local grocery store on a sunny afternoon. People are killed doing that every day somewhere in this vast land of ours.
Safety or non-safety is not absolute.
The OP still hasn’t said where they live, how far they intend to drive, nor how the forecast is shaping up for tomorrow & subsequent days vs. on Monday morning when they posted. E.g. driving 200 rural interstate miles in a true blizzard is a bad idea for 99% of us. Driving across town in heavy snow, not so much. Which is it? We don’t know and the OP ain’t saying.
Note also the OP is saying he won’t be driving until Sat, 3 days after the blizzard was predicted to be wherever they’re talking about. So their concern is NOT driving in a blizzard. It’s driving in the aftermath of a blizzard. Details matter.
Yes, it is! If I love you enough to want to see you for Christmas, I love you enough to want you to stay alive and healthy. Besides, with the communications technology available to us today, we can be together even when we are physically apart.
Here in Bozeman our weather station says it was 32.2F at midnight. It’s now -15.7 and dropping. Luckily all I have on my plate is an MRI across town. It’s also snowing, which is a little unusual at this temperature.
I’m in Toronto, heading up to Ottawa to visit family for five days starting Christmas Eve. My aged and very worried folks begged me to not drive, and to take a bus instead. For their peace of mind, I acquiesced; a bunch of years back I spun out on black ice on the 416 while making that trek, so I’m mostly okay with sacrificing the convenience of a car while I’m there. We were bypassed almost entirely by the predicted snowmageddon last week (I posted a phone pic of the street across from my office, showing the slightly wet sidewalk and zero snow, captioned “we will somehow rebuild”) but the big upper midwest storm is supposed to move east and hit Ontario starting Thursday night. That said, the current Environment Canada forecast for this region is 4 below with a 60% chance of flurries. Your guess is as good as mine.
We’ve cancelled our Christmas travel plans twice in the last 15 years due to weather. One time because the large pass we had to get over was shutdown for an entire day. The other was the local roads and highways right around us couldn’t keep up with the snow dump. We are looking at it again this year. We have a long drive on Friday and things aren’t looking good. Saturday might be an improvement so we might delay our departure.
We have single digit highs today and tomorrow with negatives over night, but not much snow. Warms up a bit Friday but that comes with snow. Tis the season.
I have experienced dangerous problems with just a couple of inches of snow around here (and ice on elevated highways and bridges, common pieces of infrastructure in this area – St Louis – since we straddle two large rivers and there is also a large amount of waterways that feed into them; you really can’t avoid these highway structures if you need to go anywhere, and I am sure we are not the only metro region with this issue). I can drive very carefully in such conditions, and still worry that the vehicles behind me will be unable to stop, and the vehicles in front of me will become whirling frisbees that will end up near me, and hit me head on. I have driven in this situation (but no accidents, thankfully). Terrifying. Stay home, please.
There’s a great how-to video which covers the best way to travel to your destination during severe weather. It will answer all your questions. Check it out: Planes, Trains & Automobiles (1987) - IMDb
Depending on where you’re going, you may consider taking a different route to avoid the bad weather. Instead of going the direct route which may become impassable due to ice and snow, take a route that goes around that area. That will almost certainly add more time to your trip, but it could be worth it if you’re driving on dry roads the whole time. And regardless of the weather, it’s always a good idea to bring food, water and blankets when on a long trip just in case something unexpected happens.
I mis-wrote the OP: what I was interested in was to what extent Dopers are changing their travel plans because of winter storm Elliot, a potential bomb cyclone, not advice for me:
With respect to myself I am currently expecting not to travel: a combination of the the sub-zero temperatures being a serious health risk (if my car were to break down or go off the road) and there could well be spots of ice/snow on the road because road salt is not effective at these low temperatures.
The accidents aren’t all caused by morons (although that is the way to bet). I was once driving at what seemed a safe speed in fair-to-iffy conditions, hit a patch of ice on a slight curve and spun my way to the opposite shoulder. Fortunately no one was coming the other way, and I could sit there shaking for couple of minutes before continuing on my way.
I was thinking of the drivers who think “I have 4WD/AWD - I can go anywhere!!” because, yanno, the laws of physics don’t apply to 4WD/AWD…