On Monday they said it was gonna be bad Friday morning I called out of work then. I made the right decision. I wasn't gonna fuck with mother nature. So impromptu 5 day weekend.
It's all about the tires gals / guys. Your AWD machines are useless on bad tires - I would take a RWD car with proper snow / ice tires over AWD anything with summer or all-season tires... If your finally hones whatever AWD car has inappropriate tires - avoid the roads if you can. If your shitbox 70s Dodge whatever has proper snow tires - drive as much as you want, just try to avoid the spinning idiots with inappropriate tires.
This is good advice. Rather than roads, sidewalks are better, but I personally prefer to drive through people's front yards. barfo
Good advice. Maybe I got lucky. I have summer tires on my car and absolutely destroy the snow. Never put chains on. Low clearance obviously, but I’m not taking it off road.
I’m over in the tri cities area of WA now and it’s snowing hard here too. I’m picking up my son from school right now and the traffic looked horrible the opposite way. Stay safe out there everyone.
I know I'm getting old when I don't even glance at my snow shovel with a snowed in driveway...let it snow!
Snow is only enjoyable if you don't have anywhere to be. The aesthetic of it is beautiful. But if you have to or need to do anything it's a pain in the ass. Finally happy I can just relax without those thoughts.
Define Snow: noun 1. atmospheric water vapor frozen into ice crystals and falling in light white flakes or lying on the ground as a white layer.
If it was just me on the road during a snowstorm things would be fine. Couple things: Momentum is your best friend. Always run yellow lights. Always wait a couple seconds and look around when a light turns green. Give yourself a huge following distance. Take corners slow. Most importantly have a vehicle equipped for snow. Unfortunately there’s so many awful awful drivers that when the weather is fine it’s still crazy out there. Add snow and it’s a mess. Ive driven over Mt Hood en route to Bend in white out conditions several times. I’ve driven in eastern Washington near lake Roosevelt in blizzard conditions and been fine. I’ve driven for work from near the I5/217 interchange (through the Terwilliger curves) and white knuckled it for 8 hours while all kinds of cars were abandoned, even chained up semi’s and I was chugging along. For the simple fact everyone else on the road is dumb as fuck I choose to avoid driving in it unless absolutely necessary.
Thanks! A couple visits to a reputable chiropractor and some really good stretches have me feeling on my way to recovery.
I believe I told the story here before when we still lived in Portland and there was a huge snow storm may 15 or 16 years ago, over the winter break. My wife was working downtown and had to go pick up my youngest. My older kid was in winter-camp at the zoo and I went there in my old 1991 RWD BMW. I saw that the snow was starting and changed the tires to snow tires I had (it was a cheap alternative to rally tires - I was an amateur rally driver at the time and that's why I had them). Got on the 26, it was blocked from here to eternity so took a side road, went up to Burnside from Cornell? and down the hill after the cemetery - it is rather steep and winding there - I was basically dodging AWD SUVs and trucks that were pirouetting in front of me into the ditches. Made it to pick the kid and got a message from my wife that her AWD Subaru was having problems moving so she very sensibly parked it and took the Max to the stop near the zoo - where we picked them up in that old rear-wheel-drive BMW and made it home traversing the same steep, winding road again without any issues. Feck, the reason I had snow tires for that BMW was because my wife stopped letting me take her Subaru to rally events since I would return it all dirty and she did not want this to happen when she got her latest newest Subaru. I later replaced the BMW with my own Subaru and until I got snow tires for it - my rally performance in it was worse than my performance in the BMW with snow tires (of course, on the same kinds of tires - the AWD is very useful, but tires > AWD in low traction situations).
I take this mindset all the time. On a totally unrelated to MZ's original post but I'm too lazy to start a new post... I have a pet peeve when it comes to people who aren't from Oregon, complaining about how people drive in the snow here, as if the snow here is the same as it is other places. It's like when Southern Californians say Portlanders can't 'drive in the rain', when they rarely have to drive in the rain whereas we do all the time. It's the same with snow. Sure, it doesn't happen a lot here, but dry powdery snow isn't difficult to drive in if the elevation doesn't change much and it's not sloppy snow or has ice on top of it.
A couple years ago when we had the big snowstorm that showed up 5 hours early on a Friday, i was doordashing a couple orders just to get some money in before the storm hit. They said it was coming in at 7. It came at 2 pm. And I was 10 miles from home. It took me 5 hours to head west on sandy for 40 blocks before my car got stalled on the last hill before all level road to my house. Because someone stopped mid hill so I had to slide backwards hoping they didn't hit me and I didn't hit another car. Several times I had to blow by people who STOPPED at stop signs. Lots of coasting down roads and weaving in and out of cars that forgot you need momentum to drive. One of the wildest experiences I ever had driving. People thought you could just stop and start like normal. My blood pressure rose substantially that day lol. And again, a shout out to @PtldPlatypus for bailing my car out of that hill admist several other cars. Was really upset I was that close to making it home! The walk home that night was brutal too. Also a reminder this was Friday rush hour traffic. Hopefully the only time ever I see Google maps show ALL red.
Today has been great for this exact reason. I walked to the grocery store and just enjoyed it. Tomorrow my kids both have doctors appointments in the morning. Really hope we don't get a hard freeze overnight.
