Yes, we get that with some regularity, and while Travel Not Recommended warnings will be issued we won’t shut down entire cities. Because we’ll have Highways Dept and City crews out with trucks sanding and/or salting the roads (depends on the temp - if it’s too cold salt does no good.) And because many of us are on modern winter tires which have some sort of black magic going on - roads you literally can’t walk on because they’re so slippery and Nokians and their ilk will give some traction - not much, but enough if you’re careful.
That is not to be the least bit critical of your reaction to those conditions. Driving with summer or even all season tires on unsanded/salted glare ice is suicidal. A single wrong move and you’re sideways out of control. Wait for it to melt. That’s not a viable strategy for us, though.
[li]Mandate chains for semi-trucks. Apparently, from what one of the local news channels said today, GA actually has this on the books. They can, under these conditions, mandate that semis use chains on their drive wheels, or require them to get off the road. They never “deployed” that rule yesterday. I know, in my instance, 75% of the clusterfucks I picked my way through were caused by trucks that could not maintain enough traction on the ice to make it up moderate interstate inclines. I’m assuming up north trucks routinely use chains under these conditions.[/li]
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I have never in my life seen tire chains on a car or truck - maybe out West in the mountains, but they aren’t used in Duluth - which is a steep town. I live in the Mississippi river valley - its fairly hilly around here - I have a 1,000 foot drop hill with a fairly steep grade to drive every day.
They tear up roads something fierce. Be prepared for steep road repair bills.
I am so sorry, but I just can’t stop snickering. I have been through this myself, but generally there was at least a foot of snow, right around rush hour, in a few hours.
And, yes, schools and businesses waited until the roads got too bad to drive safely, and then let everyone go. We’ve learned our lesson on that. In my company, everyone gets a laptop and instructions to work from home if the weather is too bad, now.
Yeah, but that doesn’t work on days I’m teaching class. I had a classroom of 21 new hires who were all staying in a hotel next door to our headquarters building. The weather wasn’t an issue for them so no way we could justify canceling class, and no way I can train them from my laptop at home.
But Minnesota doesn’t and truckers don’t use them here. Unless they are invisible. Studded tires are illegal in Minnesota. If chains tear up the road, they are nothing compared to studded tires.
I’m not sure I’ve seen semis out in glare ice until the salt trucks hit. In Minnesota, the salt trucks start pretty much the moment it gets icy and run until you are back to “normal winter driving conditions.” And they hit the interstates hard and heavy - which is where the semi traffic would be. So I suspect chains aren’t necessary due to the heavy layer of chemistry out keeping the interstate more or less drivable.
Just the city of Minneapolis (which doesn’t do the interstate) has over fifty trucks to salt the roads (or sand, I just looked it up to get that number, they call them sanders - better PR).
In other parts of the country, they just close the interstate - they pull the semis off the roads until its safe. They do that in outstate Minnesota - I94 between Alexandria and Fargo will just get shut down if it isn’t safe to drive.
True, some people have to work on-site, we can’t get around that. But if those of us who can work from home do so when the roads are likely to be bad, there’s that many fewer people clogging the arteries and getting in accidents.
We’re not big on closing the interstates in the Northeast. After a few storms, we don’t do much for an inch or two; any more than that, and they send out four staggered plows, with salt and sand. But, now that I think, I never see semis on the road when it snows.
Have you driven on Hakkepelitas, X Ice 3’s, Blizzaks, or similar? Because they certainly are better on glare ice than all seasons. It’s not even close. Cite
Yes, I’ve driven on Blizzaks, at least, and thanks to that video, it’s obvious I was wrong.
Real-world, however, is different than a hockey rink where the ambient temperature most likely has never dropped below 0°C/32°F. I wonder what the air temperature was when that video was shot. I’d like to see a similar test done at –20° either scale and colder, preferably down to –40°.
Winter tires’ softer rubber might reach a point of diminishing returns and may be the reason I did not believe studless snow tires make any difference.
Earlier this winter we had a bunch of light snowfalls at -30C, and that leads to ludicrously slippery conditions. Not enough snow to plow away, gets compacted by traffic, and it’s so hard that the sand doesn’t even hardly bite. I use Nokian Hakk R’s which incorporate some sort of black magic to provide traction on ice, and in those conditions even they were sliding about. But not like the people around me with all seasons were. The winter tire performance does degrade as the temperature drops, but it remains superior to all seasons. Modern winter tires are true marvels of engineering.
I thought I was ahead of the game when I headed out for work this afternoon. My car windows were in pretty reasonable shape because I had done most of the heavy lifting in preparation for the previous night’s pizza run. It didn’t occur to me that the fairly gentle incline of my parking space would, in combination with all of the ice, immobilize my car. A passerby gave me a hand digging out. My car is now parked in a more level space, so I’m hoping that getting to work tomorrow won’t be nearly as much of an adventure.
You’re somehow confusing ice and packed-down snow. Packed-down snow can be fairly slick, but usually not too bad. Ice is a whole 'nother matter.
Several years ago here in Colorado Springs, we had a day where it snowed pretty much all day long, but the streets were warm enough to melt it. And then the temperature dropped about 8 degrees, just as evening rush hour was beginning. Presto–instant city-wide ice rink.
In the downtown area, you COULDN’T go faster than about 5 mph–unless you didn’t care how many cars or curbs you hit trying to get stopped. ABS does no good when there’s no traction to begin with.
I don’t think so - at least, that wasn’t the primary factor. The biggest problem (for the Birmingham, AL area) was an inaccurate weather forecast. Birmingham-area residents were told to expect snow flurries and possibly a light dusting of snow during the day on Tuesday. The storm was considerably worse than that, and temperatures dropped as well, creating a significant icing problem on roads.
By the time government agencies and private companies realized things were getting bad, it was already too late to implement any sort of organized response. Keep in mind that Birmingham, like the vast majority of southern cities, has very little in the way of equipment for icy roads. It’s a cost / benefit analysis problem - no county or municipal government is going to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on specialized equipment that will get used MAYBE once every three or four years.
So, at 10 a.m. Tuesday, when folks started to realize “Hey, this snow is heavier than they said it would be, and it’s freezing on the roads,” schools began to announce closures and people started leaving work in droves. Now, people leave work in droves every day – that’ why it’s called “rush hour.” But when you combine rush hour with icy roads and no widespread infrastructure to deal with icy roads, you get gridlock.
We’ve handled ice and snow storms in the past with relatively few issues – as long as schools / companies / governments know it’s coming, we usually make plans in advance to just not go anywhere. Because the forecast was wrong, and because the storm came in the middle of the morning, it … well, snowballed.
In the Atlanta metro area the storm warning a day ahead was dead on. They were actually starting to get the word out Sunday night on the possibility of what in fact happened. There was no surprise to anyone paying attention. (Which apparently doesn’t include school superintendents.)
Panic was a major additive factor. Sure, it came down as snow and promptly became ice on the roads and that was going to makes things difficult. But everybody taking off at once and then staying on the roads turned it into a serious traffic nightmare. One site had a set of 4 maps showing the green/yellow/orange/red color code for the major roads. Went from all green to nearly all red in less than two hours. And still people kept trying to get onto roads thinking they were going somewhere.
The local news media unfortunately contributes to this mentality. They always overhype the chance of snow. They love to cover stories about stores running out of milk and bread when a tenth of an inch is predicted, etc. So when the local media starts screaming “Drive home now!”, guess what happens?
Mrs FtG and I went out this morning to see if we could do some errands. At the top of the neighborhood I wanted to turn left to avoid a hill, but that way was a sheet of ice. Tried going right. Approaching the hill there were 3 cars scattered about trying/failing to make it up the hill.
U-turn and return home at that point.
98% of the roads are bare and dry. But the patches on hills, in the shade, etc. are still there and really bad.
Thanks, Sauron. My question I think is why with only a couple inches predicted did everyone feel the need to leave work and get home ASAP? I’m in Minneapolis and it’s been snowing all morning today and no one has felt the need to flee the scene. Even if it started snowing mid-afternoon people would still leave at their normal times. It snowed three inches last night and even though plows had not been out yet we all got to work on time. Too me Atlanta still seemed like a panic. “oh my god, it’s snowing. Gotta get home right now!”
Is it simply because Atlantans are not used to driving in this stuff?