Snow driving in Seattle

Nothing that a few of bags of sand couldn't have fixed.

I always keep a couple of bags of playbox sand in my shed for the winter ice. Works like a charm on the driveway and sidewalks.

 

Thats just freaking slippery! Wow.

 

Yes I always get a laugh when I hear people from the east saying people on the west side don't know how to drive.

Apparently it can get about a billion times more slippery on the west side and there is hills, big hills.

I've driven all over in the winter but the west side has special winters. You can't imagine how slippery it can get. Get out of your truck and fall flat on your ass. One person could push your truck sideways into the ditch no problem. It's like polished ice. I've driven on ice roads and there like dry freeways compared to the icy roads on the west coast. The other thing to it's always near the freezing point so it just makes it worse.

 

Yeah, I gotta agree with the people who said slick is slick, if your car, truck, or bus can slide down a hill sideways I don't see much help with driver skill or no skill. I can understand what y'all are saying about the hills, I've only been out to seattle once and it was up/down/up/down all over the place. I also know what y'all are saying about the road prep. I lived in Va Beach for a while and remember one winter we had a severe ice storm. The city didn't salt or sand the roads and it was a sheet of at least 1/2 inch thick ice over everything. No hills there, but cars were still sliding around like an air hockey puck. No good...

 

x2 an ice road at 5 degrees is "sticky" the pressure from tires isnt enough to melt ice and make the water barrier which is actually what makes ice slippery. no sand no salt and temps at or near freezing is a really bad combo

 

I didn't know that an icy road at 32* is worse than an icy road at 5*. Can you explain this to me? I live in southern Louisiana and we just don't see snow.

I'm thinking that at 32* when your vehicle passed the ice melts then freezes again, but at 5* the vehicle doesn't generate enough heat when passing to thaw the ice, making it watery. Is this correct?

 

Oh yes near freezing point it's way worse. At -40 below it's like driving on dry pavement again. You know don't go crazy on the brakes but it's not bad really. Just slightly below 32 is a nightmare.

Worse then a hockey rink. You would not really have a problem driving on a hockey rink. They keep the ice colder after all they still have to maintain the ice.

It's not like it's even black ice. Black ice can be where some road texture still shows threw cause it's so thin. On the west coast the ice is so thick there is no texture left.

People that think they know how to drive on ice got to try driving on the west coast. It's different.

 

water on a molecular level is round like beads beads... spheres almost like marbles between the tires and the ice... Ice, on a molecular level, is actually sharp. the crystals that form are actually grippy. what happens is the heat from the friction and pressure of tires is enough to raise the surface temp to above freezing, melting it and it makes that water "barrier". At 10 degrees and lower the ice does not warm enough from pressure so the crystals stay intact. the ice actually is "sticky" and you have much more traction


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I don't know if you have ever seen this video but it's from a few years ago in Seattle. It's almost a classic now. Clearly some people do not know how to drive but this is actually a steep hill just adding to there fear.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YmVh56_lz7w&feature=player_embedded

The only thing that will save you when it's like this is chains. Don't matter what kind of tires you have they will not work.

I've never been on something this slick with studded tires but they probably are not much good also. Even if you have chains one of these clowns will still take you out.

 

Thanks for the replys

That's pretty much what I was thinking, though not as intellectually, lol. Thanks.

 

Imagine that in LA..... Carnage!

 

I see those vids and wonder how that same area could be navigated by an intelligent driver. Meaning, would a competent driver actually be ok on this road? Say you had to pass this way to get home and came across this carnage, would you still be able to get home unharmed? Or do you treat an outing in this weather as if you were trail riding and expect to receive damage?

If we had weather like this in Louisiana they would be foreced to close the state within the first few hours!

 

I actually drove in that for several winters on the west coast. It's a huge risk. Man look at me with those city buses. That hill they where sliding back down on was way steeper and way longer. I came up on it and could not pull off cause there is no side roads. I had no plans of trying to follow them up that hill till they all made it. Well the first one slid out and slid back into the second one and so on. My only hope was boot it to a cross street before they arrived and pull off. They closed that road after that.

You sure can make it to work and back again but there is clowns out to get you everywhere. It's really quite dangerous. Oh did I ever get into a accident caused by one of these clowns? Not a one. Close calls every block though. Nobody managed to hit me though. I had to drive off the freeway at high speed once cause somebody stopped dead and it was slippery like this. That started a enormous pile up. I just had it in 4 wheel drive and drove into the meridian for about one half mile then back on the freeway again. Maybe a hundred cars and trucks piled up. The idiot stopped right at the end of the bridge in the fast lane cause he missed his exit. People could not see it till it was too late. The bridge had a curve in it and a hill.

 

we were talking about this the other day at work when it was raining down here in SD...the accident rate here quadruples in the rain, i can only imagine in the snow...

 

Every year here it's just carnage. 1000's of accidents and people actually die. You get a couple of semis in that mess it's truly frightening.

What happens sometimes is the roads are fine so you go off to work then it turns about noon time to a nightmare. If you leave right there and then it will take you 8 hours to get home. If you wait you are not getting home period and would be better off booking a hotel room. If you wait till quitting time you will not even get a hotel room.

I used to live about 1/2 hour from work. 8 hours is pretty bad. They do tell you to stay off the roads but if you are already at work it's difficult.

 

it's certainly a hard decision to go out at in it at all. if it's an official snow day then you're good to just stay home and wait it out. if you're not backed by the city/state on not going to work...or you just have to go to work...then you better take some measures. if you can, it's best just to stay home or if you have to go get some essentials then gear up and hoof it!

 

I found if you never showed up nobody cared. They where in the same boat and understood just how ridiculous getting to work some days was. One thing about it there is not to many days like this. It eather going to get colder and that will improve it or warmer and start raining again. The clowns will have all got in wrecks so they will be off the roads. Thing is if it happens during work where it gets cold enough to freeze there is not a lot of plows to take care of it and they are stuck in the same traffic jams. If it happens during the night at least the main routes will be fine if you can get to them. Some hilly roads they just close because they're to dangerous.

 

truth. king 5 aired it but it was not in washington.