@yakkoTDI in January of this year it snowed in New Orleans. I remember because I was in Poland with my nephew where there was no snow but it snowed at his house back home.
@Kidsandliz That’s for a Hotwheels. For what’s in the driveway, you’d need a flame thrower and they’re actually getting affordable. How about a sidedeal?
@Kidsandliz Only for the first snowpocalypse. After that, it pays for itself and can double as a patio heater, just make sure to clear away the dry leaves.
i’ve managed to buy a house with a garage and kept it clean enough that both cars still fit inside. neither of these feats would have been accomplished without the help of my wife’s financial savvy or nagging
Clear off just a 10" circle on the windshield and drive hunched over staring through it, leave a foot of snow and ice on the roof to slide off on the highway and clobber a car behind me, then run off the side of a a perfectly straight stretch of road into the ditch by alternating between 100% throttle and 100% brake for no reason.
@brennyn Running off the road means you didn’t play “go play skid” with a car in an empty shopping mall parking lot as a kid. :laughing" Learning to drive my dad took us to one and then taught us how to put the car into a skid and get out of it.
But yeah on the make it so you can at least see out somewhere, then turn the defroster in high so the rest of it melts. And then hope your windshield wipers aren’t frozen to the windshield since at least mine are below where the defroster will thaw them out.
@Kidsandliz My parents did the same for me. If nothing else, it’s very helpful to know what the car feels like when it’s on the verge of skidding.
Snow in this area is often accompanied by freezing rain, so I got into the habit of leaving my wipers folded sticking straight up. Works until some jerk folds it back down just so they can stick a flyer under it, then you have a frozen wiper AND paper frozen to the windshield.
@brennyn@chienfou@Kidsandliz I never lived where there was frequent snow, but I grew up and learned to drive where concrete roads were smooth and had an oil stripe in every lane, and it rained at 3:30PM most days, often just long enough to turn the freeway into a slick-as-wet-glass surface. As a result, when I first encountered snow and glare ice, I found it … exhilarating? I’m weird. (I still cherish the memory of my first winter here in Houston, when we got about 10 inches of snow around where I worked. I went out to lunch in the Parts Department’s front-wheel-drive Rabbit Pickup, and serenely cruised past all the confused lead-sled jockeys who had ditched, guardrailed, or spun themselves to an unrecoverable halt. I shall forever treasure the hateful glares directed at this upstart little truck just having no trouble at all.) (At one point, there were more than 40 damaged vehicles on the freeway in front of the dealership. Nobody had been going very fast, so there were no injuries, but it was a feast for towing services and body shops.)
At one point, there were more than 40 damaged vehicles on the freeway in front of the dealership. Nobody had been going very fast, so there were no injuries, but it was a feast for towing services and body shops.
Pre cell phones I was driving back to Cleveland from Chicago in the winter, fresh snow, lots was salted so plenty of slush, sun setting, temperature dropping rapidly… and under a bridge the highway had started to freeze thus ice up and skidded off the road. I had the sense, as soon as I had traction in the knee deep snow, to steer back to the bridge so other cars experiencing the same wouldn’t hit me.
Sure enough bing bing bing each car went from under the bridge spinning into the snow. Good thing I headed back to the bridge as soon as I had traction or I would have been hit more than once. A big pile up. Everyone was just going to sit in the car and wait. For what I do not know as we were on the highway and a tow truck wasn’t going to magically appear.
So I locked the car and hitchhiked to the nearest exit with a gas station, called a tow truck. He picked me up at the gas station, we went back to the mess, he was the only tow truck there and he made a fortune that night. He pulled me out first. I am not sure if the cars that hit each other were drivable or not but I know, before I got back on the highway (had to wait for a lull in rush hour traffic to get back on the road and to make sure cars stopped skidding where we all had - they slowed down when they saw our mess) he had pulled out 4 or 5 other cars.
Damn people in the PNW are so bad when it snows. Clear off the WHOLE car, people. Those falling chunks are not cool. Also, they will slide forward when you go downhill and you’re screwing yourself over. Whatever, you’re not good at driving in snow, so stay home.
@Salanth Around here they think on the rare occasions we have snow that tailgating is still appropriate as is speeding. Those are good days to use cross county skis to get somewhere. And actually when I lived in northern Idaho I did have to cross country ski to work on more than one occasion - about 3 and a bit miles down one steep hill and up another - as there were steep hills, and they used some chemical rather than salt which didn’t do squat with respect to making the roads less icy/packed snow less slippery.
The kids loved it though. The junior high and high school were at the bottom a long steep hill and a lot of kids brought a plastic sled with them and used that to get down the hill. No idea what they did with them while in school. Locked them to the bike racks? I was not trying to drive down that hill to find out. Kid walked to school. Not my problem.
@Salanth PNW people have no excuse, it snows fairly often up there. I managed to arrive in the L.A. area two winters back just as that snowstorm buried San Bernardino, so on my way in on I-10, I got to see just how bad the drivers around there were coping. Deep in the valleys, it wasn’t bad, but high on the hills and up in the mountains it reportedly got very tense. Nobody had thought to scrape their car’s roof before setting off, and the flying snowslabs were everywhere.
@Fuzzalini Yeah but then you risk melting. You can always put on more clothes/jackets… to stay warm. You can not take off your skin if you get hot enough.
On the rare occasion when Houston does get snow, I would normally wait it out until it gets warm enough to melt the snow. Also, my car stays in the garage at home and a parking garage at work so this would never be a problem.
I have a heated garage, so it won’t happen. But what I did before was to scrape the windshield, and wait for the sun to melt the rest. (before that, I lived in South Florida - never snowed)
People who don’t get the snow off their roof are donkeyholes, idiots, and dangerous. Not saying I’ve never done it, but I shouldn’t have.
Also, 1" is way worse than 6" for clearing. The 1" becomes ice. 6" sweeps. Either way, nobody knows how to drive in it, has snow tires, or is prepared to get stuck (or unstuck). The number of 2wd vehicles (even trucks) around here is ridiculous. People mock Subarus, but in 23 Colorado and Montana winters, I’ve never been stuck in mine.
Get the right vehicle, the right tires, and learn how to drive.
@HorseyB Also people in big 4WD manly pickups (they are only in 4WD if you select it, and it’s NOT the same as an AWD like the mentioned Subarus or a couple of other things). 4 driven tires sliding in snow doesn’t help. My in-laws live in Boulder CO up a mountain and I swear it is Subaru capitol of the U.S. they do say if you live there in Winter, there are some special tires that help a lot. He bought a fancy BMW SUV but I think they mostly use the Subarus in Winter.
@HorseyB@pmarin Yeah chains can help. I forgot to sell mine when I left northern Idaho. I was shocked when someone bought them from me for a good price in the deep south.
@Kidsandliz@pmarin chains are good, but they’ll destroy the road if there’s not enough snow. And if they’re not tight enough, they’ll destroy your truck, too. We mostly use them on our tractor, and thwy make a huge difference. But we keep a set in everything, even my minivan. You just never know in the mountains!
@HorseyB@pmarin I only used mine once when it was just too icy to get up the hillside to get to where I lived and I didn’t feel like walking up around 8 or so blocks with groceries, potentially sliding on the ice and snow (and park on the street at the bottom of the major hill) as they don’t believe in using salt there and what they use instead basically doesn’t work.
I originally had bought them as you sometimes need them to get over Snoqualmie Pass (going from northern Idaho on I-90 to Seattle) even in the summer. If you don’t have them and need them there you can’t drive over the pass and the locals make a fortune renting you chains to go up the mountain and down the other side. I am sure that company earns a fortune every year.
As others have mentioned I live in an area that is not snow prone on a regular basis.
If I wake up and find a couple of inches of snow on my car it means I’m on vacation someplace and it’s probably a rental. At that point I will assess my need to go somewhere else from the condo/Airbnb. If I have to go I’ll brush off whatever I can, the best I can, then turn on the car to defrost the windows. Sometimes the rentals will have a snow brush in them but you can’t count on it.
If it snows here, the whole area shuts down as we have no idea how to drive in snow or ice. If the roads / bridges ice up, they spread sand on the roads (from the beach usually), well technically blown sand from the highway by the beach as they state they can’t put it back on the beach as it is contaminated.
It goes like this: Forget I have a remote car starter, go out to my car probably with “too little” time, get into the car and grumble as I turn the car on and realize I have a remote car starter. I pull the ice scrapper out and chisel the ice as the defrost won’t be fast enough, because remember I came out with “too little” time.
Figure out what went wrong in West Central Florida!!
@yakkoTDI in January of this year it snowed in New Orleans. I remember because I was in Poland with my nephew where there was no snow but it snowed at his house back home.
@yakkoTDI You mean with the weather or just in general?
@yakkoTDI Inland Southern California too. I was going to comment oh what happened to Hell Freezes Over?
@macromeh They would probably be related.
I wish the answer was blow torch.
@Kidsandliz That’s for a Hotwheels. For what’s in the driveway, you’d need a flame thrower and they’re actually getting affordable. How about a sidedeal?
https://palmettostatearmory.com/exothermic-technologies-pulsefire-ubf-underbarrel-flamethrower-black-pf-ubf.html
KuoH
@Kidsandliz @kuoh
@kuoh At that price it would be cheaper to pay someone to plow your driveway and clean off your car.
@Kidsandliz Only for the first snowpocalypse. After that, it pays for itself and can double as a patio heater, just make sure to clear away the dry leaves.
KuoH
@kuoh @yakkoTDI Ok so based on that video using a leaf blower might work on non-icy snow.
Put car in a big baggie!
Weep bitterly.
i’ve managed to buy a house with a garage and kept it clean enough that both cars still fit inside. neither of these feats would have been accomplished without the help of my wife’s financial savvy or nagging
@spacemart I’m thinking the nagging is the more important quality?
Go back to bed until the snow melts.
Look for the hole in the roof. I got bigger problems than ice or snow on the windshield.
Clear off just a 10" circle on the windshield and drive hunched over staring through it, leave a foot of snow and ice on the roof to slide off on the highway and clobber a car behind me, then run off the side of a a perfectly straight stretch of road into the ditch by alternating between 100% throttle and 100% brake for no reason.
@brennyn Running off the road means you didn’t play “go play skid” with a car in an empty shopping mall parking lot as a kid. :laughing" Learning to drive my dad took us to one and then taught us how to put the car into a skid and get out of it.
But yeah on the make it so you can at least see out somewhere, then turn the defroster in high so the rest of it melts. And then hope your windshield wipers aren’t frozen to the windshield since at least mine are below where the defroster will thaw them out.
@Kidsandliz My parents did the same for me. If nothing else, it’s very helpful to know what the car feels like when it’s on the verge of skidding.
Snow in this area is often accompanied by freezing rain, so I got into the habit of leaving my wipers folded sticking straight up. Works until some jerk folds it back down just so they can stick a flyer under it, then you have a frozen wiper AND paper frozen to the windshield.
@brennyn @Kidsandliz
Pro tip: be familiar with the parking lot before the snow hits. Those concrete stops can be a bitch to hit in a side spin.!
@brennyn is your name Mahem ™?
@brennyn @chienfou @Kidsandliz I never lived where there was frequent snow, but I grew up and learned to drive where concrete roads were smooth and had an oil stripe in every lane, and it rained at 3:30PM most days, often just long enough to turn the freeway into a slick-as-wet-glass surface. As a result, when I first encountered snow and glare ice, I found it … exhilarating? I’m weird. (I still cherish the memory of my first winter here in Houston, when we got about 10 inches of snow around where I worked. I went out to lunch in the Parts Department’s front-wheel-drive Rabbit Pickup, and serenely cruised past all the confused lead-sled jockeys who had ditched, guardrailed, or spun themselves to an unrecoverable halt. I shall forever treasure the hateful glares directed at this upstart little truck just having no trouble at all.) (At one point, there were more than 40 damaged vehicles on the freeway in front of the dealership. Nobody had been going very fast, so there were no injuries, but it was a feast for towing services and body shops.)
@brennyn @chienfou @werehatrack
Pre cell phones I was driving back to Cleveland from Chicago in the winter, fresh snow, lots was salted so plenty of slush, sun setting, temperature dropping rapidly… and under a bridge the highway had started to freeze thus ice up and skidded off the road. I had the sense, as soon as I had traction in the knee deep snow, to steer back to the bridge so other cars experiencing the same wouldn’t hit me.
Sure enough bing bing bing each car went from under the bridge spinning into the snow. Good thing I headed back to the bridge as soon as I had traction or I would have been hit more than once. A big pile up. Everyone was just going to sit in the car and wait. For what I do not know as we were on the highway and a tow truck wasn’t going to magically appear.
So I locked the car and hitchhiked to the nearest exit with a gas station, called a tow truck. He picked me up at the gas station, we went back to the mess, he was the only tow truck there and he made a fortune that night. He pulled me out first. I am not sure if the cars that hit each other were drivable or not but I know, before I got back on the highway (had to wait for a lull in rush hour traffic to get back on the road and to make sure cars stopped skidding where we all had - they slowed down when they saw our mess) he had pulled out 4 or 5 other cars.
@brennyn @Kidsandliz @werehatrack
There’s a lot to be said for being in the right place at the right time…
Call my insurance company because my garage roof caved in under the snow.
Thank God I live in South Texas and am Retired… If we actually see snow, it is an event…
Damn people in the PNW are so bad when it snows. Clear off the WHOLE car, people. Those falling chunks are not cool. Also, they will slide forward when you go downhill and you’re screwing yourself over. Whatever, you’re not good at driving in snow, so stay home.
/giphy snow driving
@Salanth Around here they think on the rare occasions we have snow that tailgating is still appropriate as is speeding. Those are good days to use cross county skis to get somewhere. And actually when I lived in northern Idaho I did have to cross country ski to work on more than one occasion - about 3 and a bit miles down one steep hill and up another - as there were steep hills, and they used some chemical rather than salt which didn’t do squat with respect to making the roads less icy/packed snow less slippery.
The kids loved it though. The junior high and high school were at the bottom a long steep hill and a lot of kids brought a plastic sled with them and used that to get down the hill. No idea what they did with them while in school. Locked them to the bike racks? I was not trying to drive down that hill to find out. Kid walked to school. Not my problem.
@Salanth PNW people have no excuse, it snows fairly often up there. I managed to arrive in the L.A. area two winters back just as that snowstorm buried San Bernardino, so on my way in on I-10, I got to see just how bad the drivers around there were coping. Deep in the valleys, it wasn’t bad, but high on the hills and up in the mountains it reportedly got very tense. Nobody had thought to scrape their car’s roof before setting off, and the flying snowslabs were everywhere.
Depends on how much snow is on my car, bc here it could be a foot of snow or an inch or snow that froze and it’s not coming off with a broom anyway
Living in the south this is a problem we seldom have. Around here we just leave the car in the garage and wait a while until the snow/ice melts away.
Don’t live where it snows. Works for me every time.
@Fuzzalini Yeah but then you risk melting. You can always put on more clothes/jackets… to stay warm. You can not take off your skin if you get hot enough.
@Kidsandliz I live where it doesn’t get too hot either.
On the rare occasion when Houston does get snow, I would normally wait it out until it gets warm enough to melt the snow. Also, my car stays in the garage at home and a parking garage at work so this would never be a problem.
I park in the garage so there’s no snow or ice on my car.
And if there is, I have much bigger problems.
I have a heated garage, so it won’t happen. But what I did before was to scrape the windshield, and wait for the sun to melt the rest. (before that, I lived in South Florida - never snowed)
@olperfesser
Jan 19th, 1977 in Tampa.
@olperfesser @werehatrack I was there.
People who don’t get the snow off their roof are donkeyholes, idiots, and dangerous. Not saying I’ve never done it, but I shouldn’t have.
Also, 1" is way worse than 6" for clearing. The 1" becomes ice. 6" sweeps. Either way, nobody knows how to drive in it, has snow tires, or is prepared to get stuck (or unstuck). The number of 2wd vehicles (even trucks) around here is ridiculous. People mock Subarus, but in 23 Colorado and Montana winters, I’ve never been stuck in mine.
Get the right vehicle, the right tires, and learn how to drive.
@HorseyB Also people in big 4WD manly pickups (they are only in 4WD if you select it, and it’s NOT the same as an AWD like the mentioned Subarus or a couple of other things). 4 driven tires sliding in snow doesn’t help. My in-laws live in Boulder CO up a mountain and I swear it is Subaru capitol of the U.S. they do say if you live there in Winter, there are some special tires that help a lot. He bought a fancy BMW SUV but I think they mostly use the Subarus in Winter.
@HorseyB @pmarin Yeah chains can help. I forgot to sell mine when I left northern Idaho. I was shocked when someone bought them from me for a good price in the deep south.
@pmarin pretty sure Boulder is the ACTUAL Subaru capital
@Kidsandliz @pmarin chains are good, but they’ll destroy the road if there’s not enough snow. And if they’re not tight enough, they’ll destroy your truck, too. We mostly use them on our tractor, and thwy make a huge difference. But we keep a set in everything, even my minivan. You just never know in the mountains!
@HorseyB @pmarin I only used mine once when it was just too icy to get up the hillside to get to where I lived and I didn’t feel like walking up around 8 or so blocks with groceries, potentially sliding on the ice and snow (and park on the street at the bottom of the major hill) as they don’t believe in using salt there and what they use instead basically doesn’t work.
I originally had bought them as you sometimes need them to get over Snoqualmie Pass (going from northern Idaho on I-90 to Seattle) even in the summer. If you don’t have them and need them there you can’t drive over the pass and the locals make a fortune renting you chains to go up the mountain and down the other side. I am sure that company earns a fortune every year.
As others have mentioned I live in an area that is not snow prone on a regular basis.
If I wake up and find a couple of inches of snow on my car it means I’m on vacation someplace and it’s probably a rental. At that point I will assess my need to go somewhere else from the condo/Airbnb. If I have to go I’ll brush off whatever I can, the best I can, then turn on the car to defrost the windows. Sometimes the rentals will have a snow brush in them but you can’t count on it.
If it snows here, the whole area shuts down as we have no idea how to drive in snow or ice. If the roads / bridges ice up, they spread sand on the roads (from the beach usually), well technically blown sand from the highway by the beach as they state they can’t put it back on the beach as it is contaminated.
Buy a new car! Now where’s that immediate drone delivery option?
KuoH
Peer out the window to see it I should wear boots and then walk on by the vehicle to work.
I do have a good snow brush and one of those cone shaped gadgets for ice if I do need to go somewhere.
“Honey…?” works like a charm for me. I may be a bit spoiled.
@Pony
I think you are …!
It goes like this: Forget I have a remote car starter, go out to my car probably with “too little” time, get into the car and grumble as I turn the car on and realize I have a remote car starter. I pull the ice scrapper out and chisel the ice as the defrost won’t be fast enough, because remember I came out with “too little” time.