101–110 of 126 posts
https://isitsnowinginpdx.com/ The site owner doesn't enforce HTTPS for some reason but supports it at the same time.
Why does this site need https?
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A thing I started doing when I lived in my first snow climate was finding an empty parking lot after the first snow of the year and really testing out my car. 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…
For my Tacoma, I make sure to put enough weight in the back (over the rear axle) to help offset the vehicle being front heavy. Typically in straightaways, if no one is around, on some of the rural roads I drive I'll test braking (not slamming, but just steady) to check traction. I've also replaced tires considered to have sufficient tread, but were a couple of years old, to make sure getting through a season was as s…
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It is incredible how little self reflection people have as a whole. It is so easy to have smug self satisfaction in the misery of others for some reason.
Most people are tongue and cheek about this type of thing. When you spend every year dealing with snow, it is just a bit wacky to see how it affects people and areas who aren’t used to it. The topic has come up plenty of times in my life and it always immediately transitions into listing the obvious reasons why it happens. But it’s an opportunity to get all territorial and worked up so we get threads like this.
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Interesting.. Could make for a cool Chrome extension, to analyze text on a page and show tooltips about the person that wrote it (I bet you can infer more than just where they're from!)
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/upshot/dialect-quiz...
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It's not so much 'choosing the correct tire' - there's a 'category of tire' and it's called a 'snow tire' and everyone in snowy areas has them, often by law. It's like 'choosing' to slip through the snow wearing Oxford shoes, or, put on a pair of boots. All of these comments about bad driving in the W. Coast, about 50% of this is just everyone has completely the wrong tires.
In California at least, it’s not that simple. There are “all weather tires” that, when paired with AWD, count for “snow tires” per CalTRANS chain control, and then there are real snow (and also, ice) tires. Guess what? You’re gonna have a better time with real snow tires versus all weather, but only the minority of vehicles in chain control in CA have them (IE the majority has chosen the wrong tire for snow safety).
But what really happens is we have a lot of people on summer tires or the crappiest of all season commodity tires. As long as you don't have to do an emergency stop or an evasive maneuver, they seem like they're adequate for Oregon weather. But I recommend everyone with such tires try a hard stop or turn (in a big parking lot of course) with these tires when it's sub-40F.
I've lived in the midwest, and in Portland. What many people don't get is that Portland has hills bigger than what people in the midwest would call a mountain. 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.
Not to mention the limited resources municipalities have to deal with these events, since they just don't happen that often. 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.
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.
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It is incredible how little self reflection people have as a whole. It is so easy to have smug self satisfaction in the misery of others for some reason.
Most people are tongue and cheek about this type of thing. When you spend every year dealing with snow, it is just a bit wacky to see how it affects people and areas who aren’t used to it. The topic has come up plenty of times in my life and it always immediately transitions into listing the obvious reasons why it happens. But it’s an opportunity to get all territorial and worked up so we get threads like this.
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> 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…
> Since they all have to learn to drive a stick (manual), we learn how to brake via downshifting too. Something to be aware of when shifting down on stick shift is that certain carts are really unbalanced when braking on the gear. You won't notice in the summer, but on slippery roads just releasing the accelerator carelessly while in a low gear can send you on a sled ride.
If you've driven a racing go-kart of the type that only has brakes on the rear axle, you'll be very familiar with this! Good practice.
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Research is also useful - 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
It's not so much 'choosing the correct tire' - there's a 'category of tire' and it's called a 'snow tire' and everyone in snowy areas has them, often by law. It's like 'choosing' to slip through the snow wearing Oxford shoes, or, put on a pair of boots. All of these comments about bad driving in the W. Coast, about 50% of this is just everyone has completely the wrong tires.
Fortunately I live on the California coast now, but when I had to deal with snow I had a set of Hakkapeliitta snow tires (from Finland), they were incredible. I wouldn't want to risk snow driving on any generic all-weather tires.
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As context for non-Portlanders, the "revolt" against additional freeways was one part of a larger effort to manage urban growth so as to avoid endless sprawl and preserve the agricultural landscape surrounding the metro area. One of the freeways that the city specifically opted out of building fifty years ago would have taken up the entire west side of the city's waterfront; because we _don't_ have a freeway running…
I'd much rather see a really robust network of buses than another light rail expansion. It's not convenient to get to the train, and it crawls through downtown at an average pace of 17 mph. I live all of 20 minutes from downtown (by car), and even then it would take me as long as 60 minutes during the day to catch the nearest bus, and then 30+ minutes to make it downtown (and that assumes the connections work flawles…