Also, snow in late December is relatively rare. We missed a white Christmas by one day. Only have an inch here where I'm at, but hey, take what you can get.
That said, having spent most of my life in Portland and also most of my life driving in the mountains in the winter to ski & snowboard, I can confirm that people in Portland can't drive in the snow. It's almost as amusing as people driving in San Diego in the rain. :-)
It is more common to see 4WD vehicles abandoned in ditches because they didn't realize 4WD doesn't help with braking or going down a hill.
Wanna learn how to drive in the snow? Tackle an unplowed, 45 degree hill littered with vehicles that didn't make it.
I'm sure your advice is a bit tongue in cheek? :D
I live on the hillier/colder/drier side of Washington where we do get some actual snow. During my kids' learning years of driving (16-18), first big snow, I find an empty/abandoned parking lot, take my kids there, do a couple of donuts and such, then throw the kid the keys, tell 'em "stay in the middleish and have fun."
They get a feel for massive understeer, sliding vs static fraction, etc this way. It makes it not a surprise later. Since they all have to learn to drive a stick (manual), we learn how to brake via downshifting too.
It all makes me feel skilled and is one of those rare moments where my teenagers actually think I have some useful wisdom to pass on still. Sadly, it earns me no credibility in any other area of their lives I'd like to peddle my wisdom to them. :)
This isn’t great advice unless you want your insurance premiums to go up.
If you want to learn to drive in the snow, drive in the snow. Get a feel for your vehicle. Drive slower than you think you need to. Know your route ahead of time and avoid inclines if possible.
Don’t play pinball with your car down a hill full of other cars.
The first key to effective snow driving is a light throttle and choosing the correct tyre. Driving in snow requires a tall tyre with a narrow section-width. This allows the tyre to cut through the crust and obtain traction on the hard surface beneath the snow (the opposite of sand tyres)...
And so on. I used to teach this stuff -- https://www.wittenburg.co.uk/offroading/Driving/Snow.html
Snow tires also can't make stupid people not stupid, much to the chagrin of many an internet commenter and clipboard warrior.
As someone who is responsible for a fleet of vehicles that have to deal with snow I can say from experience that high end snow tires will not make empty RWD vans handle better than a run of the mill AWD crossovers on Walmart's finest all seasons. No amount of money can fix that kind of weight distribution.
It just keeps happening because there are new ones every year.
I was rather surprised to find out that my parents get a snow storm every year in late February or early March that dumps 1-3 inches of snow that takes several days to melt. They live not 40 minutes from La Jolla, a city in Southern California known for year round perfect weather.
They're barely at 3,000 feet elevation and as far as I know, the snow line in the Sierra Nevada mountains, even further north, is over twice that [1]. The nearest town a few miles away and a few hundred feet lower receives no snow whatsoever so we've been completely puzzled by the phenomenon. The funny thing is, I can't find any information about it online - it seems to be a very localized phenomenon in a sparsely populated exurban neighborhood and the locals just shrug about it.
I agree that most people don't care about climate mechanics, but it is well understood.
Chicago was a balmy 55 on Christmas Eve
in the lower to mid 40’s on Christmas Day
No white Christmas here
Only RAIN!
Thanks for making me smile this morning.
When snow falls in western WA, the fall at the start gets melted by the ground, and the refreezes as the following fall hits it. This results in an ice layer covered in snow.
The states with frozen ground don't get that bottom layer of snow melting, giving them just ground covered by snow which is not as challenging to drive on as snow on ice.
So what we get in western Washington is that when it snows it gives us a particularly annoying kind of snow for driving. Combine that with us not getting snow frequently enough to get good at snow driving even in regular snow, and driving is a mess when it snows here.
Seattle tends to lose it's mind when there is barely any snow...but as soon as you get past Issaquah people start driving like they have been in snow before.
I remember one trip coming over the pass maintaining 50-60mph with a ton of snow...but as soon as I got down the hill everyone was driving 25mph on the freeway.
Mostly the PNW communities inland have it together when it comes to snow. Aside from certain areas such as Tri-Cities south to Umatilla, Columbia river gorge and the mountain passes you can typically expect to at least be able to get to your destination without issues. Central Oregon (HWY97) uses what appears to be crushed lava rock on the highway...which is quite nice.
From what I have seen though...the coastal areas (or any area which doesn't regularly get snow) people, cars and road crews are not prepared for what happens when it falls.
I live and grew up in North Idaho...outside Spokane. Snow driving is just something you accept and learn to prepare for. If I lived in Portland though I would likely stay home. It isn't "my" driving I am worried about. It is the person who has near 0 snow driving experience, and/or in a car without proper tires and maintenance that is going to be the issues.
At night you should never outdrive your headlights...in winter you should never outdrive a reasonable stopping distance. If you are not prepared or comfortable operating a vehicle in the snow...don't drive for a few hours or even days.
Driving at 25mph in a ton of snow seems a lot more sensible than driving 50-60mph, especially if your vehicle isn't equipped with snow tires.
Snow related accidents are often caused by people not slowing down.
There's just so much shit going on on the roads, compared to the east coast. They're little things here and there, but I found myself completely unable to drive on "autopilot." Nothing is intuitive; there's gotchas everywhere. Either there's an absolute bombardment of road markings and signs, or there's none at all (so you're either completely overloaded with information, or you don't have enough).
For example: you have bikelanes that merge into the center lane from the outside (without any strong indication, so I always assume the right-hand lane is disappearing -- but no, it's still there, so you always miss the turn). You have the absolute mess of highways that exit off into major stroads (!). Everything is so densely-populated that it's impossible to figure out where exactly you are, because there's so much going on.
It's like too much thought was put into road planning. There's too much shit going on.
Minnesota, showing how it's done: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DYl3SNm4KHs
But it’s an opportunity to get all territorial and worked up so we get threads like this.
If you want some humorous questions / etc. regarding snow, at the moment, check out the CHP Truckee Instagram account. 70ish miles of Highway 80 from Colfax to the Nevada state line is closed at the moment, and may be until Tuesday. All the people that "relocated" during Covid are experiencing the first real winter up there.
Driving around, slow and steady is the rule. Knowing the capabilities of your vehicle (and your driving skill limits), being prepared in case you get stuck, etc. are important.
I'm kinda surprised by this sentiment. I'm in a program in Oregon, been there for years, and drove down to Southern California. Rained the entire way. I can attest that the differences in driving in the rain are very different and definitely gets worse the more south you go. Going through the grapevine was terrifying and when I was in LA the carpool lane was just completely flooded. People always have more to improve but people in the PNW drive much safer in the rain there than most other places I've lived. People there at least know not to put on their brights in heavy traffic when it's pouring. But also I've never seen heavy flooding, especially on the highways.
As for other areas, The South is hit or miss. They get far heavier rain than the PNW but it's over a shorter period of time (though that means more flooding and so there's something to be said about what the cities could do to make things better). They do have a ton more potholes too so I'm not too surprised though. But they also have a lot less money than CA.
Accelerate to 30-40 and slam on the brakes.
Take a sharp turn in both directions and find the speed you lose traction.
Do a few donuts.
30-40 minutes of practice every year really helps you understand how your car will perform in the snow and you can decide if you need new snow tires, brakes, etc. You'll also be honing skills for that avoiding the inevitable bozo that tries to kill you that year.
I used to have a subaru and the better weight distribution made the car much more stable.
Multiple times in the last month, I've driven a stretch of Hwy 80 between Sierraville and Truckee (about 25mi) and have seen all sorts driving beyond their ability and having or coming very close to accidents. Always love when people try and pass with a blind turn coming up. I also tend to pull over and back off to let darwin do his thing.
A friend, observing the people who relocated to Montana, suggested that a surprise snow storm in the bay area on a weekday morning would solve the housing crisis very quickly, though for time there would be a massive backlog in the morgues.
From the sounds of it Portland is to snow as L.A. is to rain. Any sign of the slightest of moisture in the air and Angelenos lose their shit and drive like dummies.
In LA, I think the issue is that people drive the exact same in the rain. There are no adjustments made to speed or space for braking.
It’s normally a 4.5 hour drive, but with snow chains and delays I could see it being closer to 10.
[1] https://www.tripcheck.com/DynamicReports/Report/RoadConditio...
Edit: To those who said that's a SoCal thing: I Know. I got razzed endlessly when I moved to Reno from the Palm Springs area for saying "The 395, The 80", which are the only two freeways in the region lol.
But I would be interested to see something well-researched on the topic.
Edgar Wright went to incredible trouble to set the film in Atlanta. It features Atlanta landmarks, culture, food, and dialect. It feels quintessentially Atlantan.
Despite that effort, they're constantly referring to highways and interstates with the definite article. "The 75", "the 85", "The Buford Highway". We don't do that here, and it sounds a bit like nails on a chalkboard.
It's hard to fault the film for this trivial issue, but it is amusing.
Seattle is worse at snow than Atlanta, something I didn’t think was possible. I avoided most of the 2019 snowpacalypse because I was in Australia (I smartly changed my flight and flew to LA early so I wasn’t stranded in the airport when the snow really hit like some of my colleagues…spending a day at Disneyland instead of worrying about making my connection to my 15-hour flight to Sydney was one of the smarter travel decisions I’ve ever made), but I was in Bellevue of all places before it really came down for a work-offsite, but it was icy and there were drifts, and it was shocking to me how poorly even the commercial areas dealt with ice and snow. I had to have my husband bring my snow boots from NYC to where I was staying 12 miles away (at The W) so that I wouldn’t break my neck walking across the street from the hotel to the venue of the off-site. I understand the lack of infrastructure, but it was again, worse than Atlanta. And Atlanta is a city that doesn’t have mountains/ski resorts nearby.
Last year, it snowed a bit and they were downright negligent about clearing out the snow and ice in front of my luxury apartment building/the busy sidewalk, making it nearly impossible to even leave (even by car, let alone if you were trying to walk). A lot of that was on the building owner, but the city was equally negligent with its lack of attempts to make streets accessible by foot or by car. A girl at UW died in 2019 because the school both didn’t put out proper signage for ice and didn’t do the rational thing and try to de-ice campus.
Like I said, I never thought I’d see a city handle snow worse than Atlanta. But the PNW (and Seattle especially) certainly does.
[1]: https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/01/atlanta-snow...
Here in Seattle, I was lucky that I was only a block from a grocery store. Roads may have been bad, but I wouldn't know. Just stuck closer to home.
Of course, now I live out down a non city maintained road. Guessing it will be longer before I get out, this time.
I spent most of my life in Minnesota, and even there, people think they can handle snow (which they do better than folks here in the Puget Sound region). But every year, there are huge pileups, gruesome accidents, slowdowns, etc. They, just as people east of the Cascades, have more experience, but I would stop short of saying that they 'handle it just fine.'
Never knew Oregon was this beautiful, I’ll definitely explore it more soon. :-)
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=UPTt6MgsOt8
Skip to 1m20s to save time.
https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2021/dec/26/shawn-vestal-r...
They probably should choose a smaller area to make this useful (for somebody).
The site owner doesn't enforce HTTPS for some reason but supports it at the same time.
Duh.
