Snow in the south!

[zogger]

LMAO ‼
Sorry I'm laughing... but we drive on it all the time with regular tires and no chains.
For many, many years we drove on it with those old rayon, nylon, steel, and fiberglass corded. bias ply tires... in rear wheel drive cars with grabby drum brakes no less.
Heck, I ran the same old bias ply street tires year 'round on my first car... a "light in the rear end", rear wheel drive, '66 Mustang with drum brakes‼ Sometimes a guy would throw an inner-tube filled with sand in the trunk for added traction when the snow got deep. But chains ruined the "slide 'round the corner" fun... chains were only for "country" roads and maybe ya' kept a set in the trunk to get un-stuck when pushing didn't work (I didn't have a set... I had enough trouble keeping gas in the darn thing, couldn't afford chains).

When I got my second car ('67 Galaxie XL with the 428 "Thunderbird" engine and an actual dual brake master cylinder... LOL) I was a bit more flush and had a set of snow tires for winter (still bias ply and no chains). That thing would whip cookies on dry pavement... the snow tires didn't help much.

addendum; Oh!... That Galaxie was the first car I went end-over-end in, ended up sliding down the pavement on the roof, and I still won the race‼ Won a whole ten bucks‼ That story made me near a legend for several years in my teens‼ L-O-L
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No, not this kind of ice you didn't. LOL right back at ya. Seen it a few times down here. Unless you can get down to a hard surface, you ain't moving except for sliding this way or the other. Doesn't happen all the time, does not happen every snow or ice storm, but it does happen once in awhile. If there was an actual proper noun for this kind of ice, I would use it.

 

[Whitespider]

Bet me and lose zogger... bet me and lose.
I know the sort of ice you're talkin' about, that smooth stuff, sometimes with a thin slather of water on it... so damn slippery you can open your coat and use it as a sail to slide down the street on your shoes.
And YES man... we drive on it‼ Yeah we drive slow... but we drive on it‼ Anyone livin' up here will tell you that‼
Eventually the street crews get out and sand down the intersections, road crews put chemical down and such... but even they haf'ta drive on it to do that, and if you're out before them... well...
The difference is y'all don't drive on it... ya' don't know how... and the street/road crews aren't prepared for it...
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[zogger]

Bet me and lose zogger... bet me and lose.
I know the sort of ice you're talkin' about, that smooth stuff, sometimes with a thin slather of water on it... so damn slippery you can open your coat and use it as a sail to slide down the street on your shoes.
And YES man... we drive on it‼ Yeah we drive slow... but we drive on it‼ Anyone livin' up here will tell you that‼
Eventually the street crews get out and sand down the intersections, road crews put chemical down and such... but even they haf'ta drive on it to do that, and if you're out before them... well...
The difference is y'all don't drive on it... ya' don't know how... and the street/road crews aren't prepared for it...
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Well, there's no way to do this test, so this bet isn't possible, but I would. Unless you can hit something hard and dry and get at least a small modicum of traction, nada.

Plenty of folks down here like me who grew up where snow and ice is common, drove on it a lot. Yes, I do have a clue and lotsa practice previously. Once in awhile, you hit stuff that means you ain't moving except in some random sliding around fashion. It can get pret near impossible to even walk on the stuff sometimes.

And no, I don't believe just people in Iowa have learned the magic secret of driving on icy roads.

Arrggh...now to use my divining rod and decide where to cut the hole in the floor......or not, let it sit froze until spring, all the other pipes are working, and froze ain't leaking!

 

[KenJax Tree]

I have to agree with Spidey here us folks in the north east and midwest are born for this stuff we might go slow and have white knuckles sometimes but we do it.


Sent from my Autotune Carb

 

[Whitespider]

I never said just Iowa folks zogger, but believe what ya' want.
If we didn't/couldn't drive on it nothing would open over a fair share of winter here, people wouldn't get home from work... and the streets and roads would never be maintained if road crews didn't drive on it. I mean, we can't count on warmer temps to make it go away... if we waited for that we'd likely be waiting into April.
It's called an Ice Storm... or sometimes just freezing rain... the result is glare ice, called that 'cause it's smooth/shiny/glossy and reflecting light puts glare in your eyes... and it's slipperier than greased owl $h!t
Heck man, for many of us it's easier to drive on it than it is to walk on it... at least ya' ain't falling down.
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[Steve NW WI]

Got sand?

:tongue:

 

[zogger]

I never said just Iowa folks zogger, but believe what ya' want.
If we didn't/couldn't drive on it nothing would open over a fair share of winter here, people wouldn't get home from work... and the streets and roads would never be maintained if road crews didn't drive on it. I mean, we can't count on warmer temps to make it go away... if we waited for that we'd likely be waiting into April.
It's called an Ice Storm... or sometimes just freezing rain... the result is glare ice, called that 'cause it's smooth/shiny/glossy and reflecting light puts glare in your eyes... and it's slipperier than greased owl $h!t
Heck man, for many of us it's easier to drive on it than it is to walk on it... at least ya' ain't falling down.
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"Oh...that's nothing"

Why..I remember back when I was about, hmm, 3-4 years old. Now see, I needed the ride, but my uncle owned it and he was ornery and a 29th dan in TieLaceC'monDo...so I had to street fight him for the keys....so, I get the keys and several phone books so I can reach the pedals and stuff...BTW, this is for a 58 Belchfyre, with the V-20 in it..neat trick, too, because this was years before '58, so I had to do a little ..err..use a little advanced tech to go "there" and bring it back..nuther story some time.....

So anyway, the local Luge team needed someone to come out and smooth their track...I said sure, be over in a bit. Get there with the belchfyre with the unbiased street slicks on it, Michelin was having me try them out...so, using the brake pedal, clutch and very proper throttle, I was able to jump from the bottom of the track up into the twists, where I proceeded to use just the right amount of torque..had to keep it within .0005 foot lbs you know...to use the slicks and burn the ice smooth, while still ascending up their twisty ice track. At the top, for sport, I "hopped" the belchfyre around and came back down, which if I had been in a Luge, would have been a new track record..

Back home, I had to street fight my uncle again (which was always weird to me they called it that, we lived out in the sticks where there were no roads at all, no streets, just the lava fields and some cliffs and stuff...)... as he was getting into my box 0 absinthe laced scotch and had it half gone. Chugging the rest, I made him go out and polish and sharpen my saber toothed badgers..err...teeths.

Rats, then I had to go work in the mines for a bit before going to school.

It was OK...I guess..sorta liked that redhead substitute teacher....wink wink snort

 

[slowp]

I prefer NOT to drive on it. It is not fun. We had frozen rain on the Oregon Coast. I had a hard time walking on it, it was that slick. I had to walk my dog each morning before work. I got the Subaru Outback out, with all season radials and it handled the downhill part without slipping, then chugged right up the hill to the office.

Subarus are darned good winter cars. They will get an annoying build up of snow in the wheel wells and you can easily forget things are slick while driving them and then have trouble stopping. They are extremely popular in Oregon and Warshington. I miss mine.

I don't know if it would drive on the ice in Georgia. I'd hate to try.

 

[Steve NW WI]

Got sand?

:tongue:

 

[Steve NW WI]

"Oh...that's nothing"

Why..I remember back when I was about, hmm, 3-4 years old. Now see, I needed the ride, but my uncle owned it and he was ornery and a 29th dan in TieLaceC'monDo...so I had to street fight him for the keys....so, I get the keys and several phone books so I can reach the pedals and stuff...BTW, this is for a 58 Belchfyre, with the V-20 in it..neat trick, too, because this was years before '58, so I had to do a little ..err..use a little advanced tech to go "there" and bring it back..nuther story some time.....

So anyway, the local Luge team needed someone to come out and smooth their track...I said sure, be over in a bit. Get there with the belchfyre with the unbiased street slicks on it, Michelin was having me try them out...so, using the brake pedal, clutch and very proper throttle, I was able to jump from the bottom of the track up into the twists, where I proceeded to use just the right amount of torque..had to keep it within .0005 foot lbs you know...to use the slicks and burn the ice smooth, while still ascending up their twisty ice track. At the top, for sport, I "hopped" the belchfyre around and came back down, which if I had been in a Luge, would have been a new track record..

Back home, I had to street fight my uncle again (which was always weird to me they called it that, we lived out in the sticks where there were no roads at all, no streets, just the lava fields and some cliffs and stuff...)... as he was getting into my box 0 absinthe laced scotch and had it half gone. Chugging the rest, I made him go out and polish and sharpen my saber toothed badgers..err...teeths.

Rats, then I had to go work in the mines for a bit before going to school.

It was OK...I guess..sorta liked that redhead substitute teacher....wink wink snort

I call BS. You couldn't get a Belchfyre with the V20 till '61.

 

[Whitespider]

zogger, do you really think cities like Minneapolis, Green Bay, Grand Rapids... even southern(ish) cities like Chicago and Detroit just shut down because of freezing rain and ice??
Use your head man.
Freezing rain is... well... rain that freezes after it lands on the surface, and at the same time it's still raining ‼ It's "wet slicked ice" ‼ (your words).
And people do know how to drive on it... people grow up driving on it ‼
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[ETpilot]

Arrggh...now to use my divining rod and decide where to cut the hole in the floor......or not, let it sit froze until spring, all the other pipes are working, and froze ain't leaking!

I would wait and see. Just monitor for leaks as it warms up. You may luck out and not have to cut that hole.

I recall a couple of years back when Atlanta got hit with an ice storm. A camera crew set up at the base of a hill. They recorded all the drivers trying to negotiate the drive going down hill. Just one wreck after another. It was something to see.

 

[slowp]

All of those mideast cities use salt. Where I lived, Up Nort, they had a huge pile of salt barged in and piled by the dock each fall. They were quite good at using it as they turned the roads turned white. That caused problems for me because when I see white on the road I tend to think it is frost.

I doubt the whole southeast has as much salt as da little up nort town. Be glad you don't. It'll eat your car up. One good thing, it won't last very long--the cold.

 

[Whitespider]

Salt ain't used any more... not for several years now... at least not 'round here.
And ya can't always wait for the "salt" truck... sometimes ya' just gotta' get there even before the "salt" is loaded on the truck.
Besides, the guy drivin' the truck droppin' the "salt"... ain't drivin' where the "salt" has been dropped... is he??
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[Dalmatian90]

but even they haf'ta drive on it to do that, and if you're out before them... well...

I've driven on roads you could barely walk on. But there does get a point that nothing good is going to happen...our fire company rescue once came to a complete stop at an accident, and after a moments pause before the driver could open his door even, it slid sideways into the ditch thanks to the crown of the road (one of the few pronounced crowns and ditches in my town). The State Trooper and rest of the witnesses laughed saying it was like a scene from a cartoon.

Before they moved to mostly wet chemicals, ConnDOT had a generation of trucks that the beds tipped forward and the sanders were in front of the rear wheels.

So they wouldn't have to chain up for ice.

I think they run on-spots now, flip the button in the cab, chains come down. Still see regular chains hanging from quite a few state plows though, ready in case everything hits the fan.

Town crew, though seldom used, have regular chains to put on their rear sanding plows.

Few years back, and relatively early into ConnDOTs new treatment routines they had a hill ice up town south of me. Even after the state truck went through (flip the chains down) and sprayed it...no one was getting up because all they did was make the black ice wetter with no traffic to help the chemicals beat up the ice. Took another hour of melting before the State Police were able to re-open it. Think at that time they had all but eliminated their sand...but since they've started keeping small stockpiles -- they'll sand the highway in front of my house once every two or three years when it just happens to be the right conditions nothing else will work as well.

I'd reckon from what I saw on the news, the most cost-effective thing you could down south is have a relative handful of sprayers to pre-treat the roads. Roads as warm as they are down south now, that amount of ice/snow up here...we might not even need to plow if you treated them in advance based on what I see up here now. Get two or three days notice, put the few sprayers you bought in the dump trucks and get them rolling in shifts around the clock to pre-treat all the main highways and bus "snow routes." The calcium chloride or whatever you're using will last once you buy it, just mix it up as needed when a year comes along with a storm you'll need it for.

 

[Dalmatian90]

Tough to find a good pic...at the very end of the video, you'll see one of the sanders forward of the rear wheels -- this truck is equipped with them on both sides. It's also unusually large for ConnDOT.



*snork*...my own photos -- forgot that my town's newer trucks have forward sanders as well:

And we don't have wing plows, but a few years back with 3' of snow on the ground, they had cobbled this guy together to help trim up the roadsides and throw the snow back further...rear wheels are chained up, though they might be partly due to lack of weight on the back:

 

[Steve NW WI]

We'd have a lot of closed roads here without something to push banks back with.

Truck wings are mostly just for high speed clearing of more width.

Snapped this and the other one on the way to work today. Good timing.

 

[Eric Modell]

Spider about 15 years ago my stepson was down to visit from Iowa, you know were they can drive on anything. One of those ice storms of the century came trough, my wife kept telling he and his wife they needed to leave or they could be stuck for awhile. You know youth they do not always listen. When they finally decided it was getting bad enough they should leave and head north they got stuck in the ditch several hundred feet from the house and bent the wheel on there new car only new car ever in this family. Several days later my wife and I took a walk in the woods because the road was so slick you could not walk on it. We went to the top of our dirt hill and saw 5 or 6 vehicles off the road abandoned. Most of these trucks were well off the road.

 

[Eric Modell]

Thirty five years ago I was a wild cat trucker, and the worst roads I ever saw were in Texas and and other southern states. It is colder up north, not as much freezing and thathing, people are better prepared for it.

 

[Whitespider]

So... Eric Modell, what part of Iowa is your stepson from??
You do realize we've been trying to give everything south of I-80 to Missouri for decades, right?
We can't figure out why you guys won't take it... we figure it's a win-win for everyone...
'Cause it would raise the average IQ of both states
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(sorry... just had'ta)
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