The Snow is Falling

Duper · Post by **Duper** » Fri Feb 07, 2014 5:03 pm

And it's absolutely beautiful.

Here in Willamette Valley Oregon, we don't get to see much snow, but when we do, it's a real treat. (for me it is at least). I know Gren and TC have a good bit more than i do being further south. ..not sure why that works that way here, but it seems to.

It will be gone in a couple of days (we have only about 4 to 5 inches here) but the neighborhood kids are having a ball.

Life is good.

Krom · Post by **Krom** » Fri Feb 07, 2014 6:06 pm

If you like it so much...we have a few feet of snow here, would you be interested in taking it all for us?

CDN_Merlin · Post by **CDN_Merlin** » Fri Feb 07, 2014 6:52 pm

Without snow there is no skiing/sledding/winter driving or snow days.

flip · Post by **flip** » Fri Feb 07, 2014 7:37 pm

Winter driving for the win! I went all the way into Lithia Springs in and out of the standstill to get my wife and bring her home. Took me 8 hours!

Duper · Post by **Duper** » Sat Feb 08, 2014 1:26 am

lol @ snow driving.

I have a Crown Vic. ..without chains.

yeah... I'm stayin home and enjoying the view.

Yeah Krom, I feel for you guys in the midwest. Yikes. That kinda "snow" is dangerous. Take it easy over there.

flip · Post by **flip** » Sat Feb 08, 2014 5:28 am

Well, I definitely wouldn't have. We even had a meteorologist who had graduated from here that lives in Texas pleading with the BOE in Douglas to close the schools. He refused, said he was getting his info from GEMA. By the time they did, it had closed up and I think the count was around 7-800 kids left on busses. Kids were walking home from school. It was a complete lack of judgment call. In the face of much opposition even. Aside from that, I have a real 4x4 with positive traction rear end, so I took the back roads and rarely even needed 4x4, but, it was that 4x4 that saved us when we had to turn around and backtrack 40 times!

Krom · Post by **Krom** » Sat Feb 08, 2014 9:38 am

While it is tempting to brag about newbies getting stuck in snow and how up here we rarely have any issues even with 6-8 inches of snow, the main difference is most of us know when you should just not travel in snow. It helps considerably up here where the local governments have the equipment to clear snow much more rapidly, usually within a few hours after an 8 inch snow fall most roads here will be passable if you drive cautiously. However, if there is 3+ inches of snow on the pavement, it is foolhardy to go driving in it even in a 4x4. I've seen plenty of big 4x4 trucks stuck or upside down in a ditch up here because someone thought a big truck would be fine. (Really I say anything 2 inches or higher is dangerous bordering on impassable, and even 1 inch is enough that you have to drive with extreme caution.) When there is that much snow on the road you should never go out unless it is an emergency or you have a snow crawler, and if you are expecting that much snow you should cancel your plans and work and get home before it falls or you can end up stranded. But even if you don't avoid it, it is better to be stranded at work or school than stranded on the highway, so don't go anywhere till the roads are cleared even if you aren't at home.

Also the quality of your tires matters just as much as what type of vehicle you are driving, badly worn tires will carry you into a ditch before you can blink, so even if you have tank of a vehicle if the tires are bald you are way more likely to ditch or get stuck.

And seriously, in bad weather you should AVOID the back roads. The bigger the road, the more likely it will be plowed in a timely fashion. Plus bigger roads are usually closer to places where you can stop and hole up for a day or two if necessary, and it is easier to move a vehicle slowly over packed ice from a busy road than it is to move through deep unpacked snow from an empty road. When the tires sink in to the snow, you can end up way more stuck and taking way more time to get out of it than if you had just crawled over the ice. And when driving on packed ice, treat 5 MPH like it was 65, give yourself that much room to stop, be extremely gentle on the brakes and accelerator, if you feel it start to slip when you push one or the other you should immediately let off the pedal (this applies to braking just as much as accelerating). A common mistake I see is someone starts slipping while approaching a stop and they just hit the brakes even harder which locks the tires and makes the vehicle just slide and spin whichever way it wants. When you let off the brakes the vast majority of the time the vehicle will right itself and get back in line and you can try again but more gently, sometimes you have no other choice but to drive so slowly that you can coast to the stop. You aren't going to get any better control of a vehicle on ice than when it is coasting in a straight line on flat pavement, you have a fixed and very small amount of traction, any action you take (turning, breaking, accelerating, going up or downhill, or any other slope) uses traction and when you exceed the available traction the vehicle slips, so budget that traction very carefully.

Sometimes there just isn't anything you can do; on the road by my old house once a couple in a SUV were driving by, they were going slow enough and taking all the necessary precautions but even so they still ended up ditching right by our house. We know they weren't going too fast because they slid to the INSIDE of the curve because it was gently sloped that way (if they had been going too fast, they would have ditched on the outside of the curve). Plus as they slid in, when their tires finally caught the snowbank in the ditch, the momentum and the high center of gravity of their SUV did the rest and they ended up laying on their side, they had to climb out the windows on the driver side. It took a truckload of sand and a couple of the neighborhood guys with 4x4s to pull them back upright and on the road, but at least they got off with just mostly cosmetic damage to the vehicle (other than the passenger mirror) and a couple hours wasted.

So really in bad weather, just stay home, it is safer for yourself and everyone else that way.

flip · Post by **flip** » Sat Feb 08, 2014 10:10 am

The only time I've ever seen snow like that here was the Storm of the Century. !2' high snow drifts beside buildings. You know what happens when you dive headlong into one? You can no longer breathe! Lol! More than a few people were pissed. we had a pretty good snow that I had been waiting for, for years, and instead of getting to play in, I'm playing minecrap all the sudden. Though, everytime it does snow or ice we get on the roads to play anyways. I got a racing alignment on my truck (tons of oversteer) which makes darting in and out of traffic fun all the time and playing in the snow a blast! Still pissed we didn't get to enjoy that day, but I was not leaving my wife stranded for days.

Tunnelcat · Post by **Tunnelcat** » Sat Feb 08, 2014 3:14 pm

Duper wrote:And it's absolutely beautiful.

Here in Willamette Valley Oregon, we don't get to see much snow, but when we do, it's a real treat. (for me it is at least). I know Gren and TC have a good bit more than i do being further south. ..not sure why that works that way here, but it seems to.

It will be gone in a couple of days (we have only about 4 to 5 inches here) but the neighborhood kids are having a ball.

Life is good.

Holy sh*t! We've been hammered. That stupid storm parked right over us and took a big dump for 3 days in a row. We have14 inches worth of the stuff too. Corvallis must be a snow magnet. Now all that snow is coated with a crust of ice since we're getting freezing rain. I had to shovel my driveway every morning for the past 3 mornings just to keep up with it, because by each morning, there was another 6 inches laid down. Walking to get the mail and paper spilled snow into the tops of my boots it was so deep and soft. This is the most snow that's came down in any single event I can remember EVER in Oregon. Now comes the flooding as all that powder melts next week. Freezing rain is coming up to you Duper.

You can't see the yardstick marks, but it's on the 12 inch mark. It was 14 inches deep last night before the freezing rain started in during early morning and began matting it down. That made for fun shoveling.

My Japanese lantern is almost buried and the little bridge to the left of it is completely covered.

Duper · Post by **Duper** » Sat Feb 08, 2014 6:10 pm

Nice Pix TC! Wow! Yeah, it's just after 4 here now and it's started sleeting. I'm glad the transition is going to be over the weekend. Then mentioned INCHES of ice during the transition. THAT could get ugly with weight of the snow and then the weight of the ice. kinda winter or 80' all over again.

Grendel · Post by **Grendel** » Sat Feb 08, 2014 8:15 pm

Meh.

CUDA · Post by **CUDA** » Sat Feb 08, 2014 8:21 pm

Ya got 8-10 right now and the freezing rain has started weather report says 4-6 more inches of snow before morning

FYI this is good for business

CUDA · Post by **CUDA** » Sat Feb 08, 2014 8:29 pm

DAMN GLOBAL WARMING is messing everybody up

Grendel · Post by **Grendel** » Sat Feb 08, 2014 8:57 pm

Gee, you came back to a thread in the Café to troll ?

Tunnelcat · Post by **Tunnelcat** » Sat Feb 08, 2014 9:54 pm

Hey Grendel, that birdbath of yours looks just like a wedding cake. Nice effect.

CUDA, you're one sadistic puppy to enjoy getting more business because of the misfortune of others.

Sirius · Post by **Sirius** » Sat Feb 08, 2014 11:41 pm

Huh... it's snowed today here too. You reminded me to look outside for once. >.>

And yeah this is why they call it "climate change" more often than "global warming" these days - those are the more noticeable effects, since you still have seasons. They just might be more severe.

Descer · Post by **Descer** » Sun Feb 09, 2014 4:23 am

WE should have that much o' snow, not the one barely coverin' angles.

Tunnelcat · Post by **Tunnelcat** » Sun Feb 09, 2014 12:55 pm

The backyard snow blanket. There's a quarter of an inch of ice on top of it now. It kind of matted the snow down to 12 inches from the previous day. The roads are icy and a royal mess right now. I'm getting cabin fever.

Tunnelcat · Post by **Tunnelcat** » Sun Feb 09, 2014 2:02 pm

CUDA wrote:DAMN GLOBAL WARMING is messing everybody up

This might be an explanation for the snow and cold CUDA.

http://news.yahoo.com/stronger-pacific- ... 25166.html

woodchip · Post by **woodchip** » Sun Feb 09, 2014 2:54 pm

Nice pics TC. I like the shot of your backyard. Here in Mich we have your amount of snow on the ground since early Jan. Been too damn cold for it to melt. Don't see any warm up through next weekend.
On a more positive note I'm getting some perennial seeds started now along with a couple of ornamental pear trees that I whizzed from the local banks tree. It had exceptionally nice color this last fall. Hollyhocks are sprouting as are some Tritoma's. Spring can hurry up and get here any time now.

Grendel · Post by **Grendel** » Sun Feb 09, 2014 3:50 pm

More of the same.

flip · Post by **flip** » Sun Feb 09, 2014 6:06 pm

Looks like the Deep South is in for another round, this time ice! Never been so ready for springtime. Where's that dang groundhog at so I can choke him?!

Tunnelcat · Post by **Tunnelcat** » Sun Feb 09, 2014 6:14 pm

Yeah, Grendel, a lot of our trees look like that. There is hope however. It's now 45 degrees.

Krom · Post by **Krom** » Sun Feb 09, 2014 7:30 pm

So the other day I noticed one of our lesser used sidewalks accessing the street had gotten pretty narrow from the plow and from drifting, so while I was running the snow blower getting the latest bit off the sidewalk I decided to take a shot at widening it up a bit again. Usually doing that is an ordeal because the snow bank is normally compacted and or solid ice in places, about the consistency of wet sand and just about as heavy so you can only scrape at the snow slowly till you hit the ice and then have to come back with a metal shovel to finish that off, but as evidence to just how consistently cold it has been around here it wasn't hard at all and the blower cut right through it in a couple seconds, extremely unusual.

Also around town a lot of the snowbanks on corners and driveways have gotten so tall that I can't see over them anymore when driving, makes most intersections and crossings a pain in the ass. And that is after the city has gone around with trucks and skid steers cleaning up the majority of them once already.

Top Gun · Post by **Top Gun** » Mon Feb 10, 2014 2:13 am

We got a couple more inches today, but it was really the first time all winter that I had to drive through it actively snowing. It's not bad at all if you just take your time and are gentle with your inputs. Clearing the stuff off the car while my hands were mostly-numb from curling was a royal pain in the ass though.

snoopy · Post by **snoopy** » Mon Feb 10, 2014 6:59 am

Got power back last night after four days without it...

And my back yard is littered with branches now...

I think I'm ready for this winter to be over.

Tunnelcat · Post by **Tunnelcat** » Mon Feb 10, 2014 3:06 pm

I'm jealous. Krom owns a snow blower. That would have worked really well for the first 2 days of our storm, because the snow was light and fluffy. By Saturday, the temps had gone up and water started trickling down into the snow, turning it into sloppy, heavy goo, with a crust of ice on top.

I was watching my neighbor attempt to back out of his garage this morning with his little Nissan sports car, the very model that Isaac likes to drool over. He must have been thinking that since the center of the road was plowed, he would be able to drive it to work with no problem. HOWEVER, he hadn't counted on the fact that this car is very low slung, and that he hadn't bothered to shovel his driveway again which still had 8 inched of wet snow on it, and he assumed that those huge balls of snow the plows leave behind were soft and fragile, which were right in his path. He tried to back up real fast, thinking that he could force his way through the driveway snow and snow windrows. What he didn't count on was that one, single big ice ball of snow, right behind his path to freedom, was hard and heavy, which stopped him cold. Plugged up one of the car's tailpipes too. Then he got stuck. After all sorts of back and forthing and wifey pushing, he managed to get it back into the garage and then had his wife take him to work in their 4WD. That was my morning's entertainment.

Hey woody? Here we have cold and snowy weather, but my neighbor's tree is budding out. Kind of ahead of the weather don't you think?

Spidey · Post by **Spidey** » Mon Feb 10, 2014 4:20 pm

I don't envy anybody that needs a blower, that just means they have a lot of area to clear.

Krom · Post by **Krom** » Mon Feb 10, 2014 4:33 pm

Spidey wrote:I don't envy anybody that needs a blower, that just means they have a lot of area to clear.

Aye, corner lot + driveway, and I usually do the neighbors too.

Tunnelcat · Post by **Tunnelcat** » Mon Feb 10, 2014 4:43 pm

Same here. Corner lot, wide driveway that's steep and needs to be cleared or I don't get the car back into the garage, sidewalk all the way around. If it snowed more here, I'd get a blower. Plus, my neighbors are older. They might just pay me a little to clear theirs.

Ferno · Post by **Ferno** » Mon Feb 10, 2014 7:34 pm

Most people just don't know how to handle 2+ inches of snow in their vehicles.

What Krom says about that is bang-on, for front and rear wheel drive cars. But, if your car has awd, like some subarus, you're better off because it can put the power down on all four corners. A truck works in 3 inches and up, provided you engage the 4wd system AND use low range. But by the time you're doing that, you'd better know what to do in case of side-slip because no matter how good you are, you're going to end up going sideways, then backwards. And for that, you would need some actual off-road training because the road becomes similar to a sopping wet logging road.

four inches however, and you'd better have some advanced training under your belt. And that's only offered with rock crawling training.

Tunnelcat · Post by **Tunnelcat** » Tue Feb 11, 2014 3:23 pm

There's also the temperature of the snow you're dealing with is key. Snow that's below 18F is not as slippery as snow above 25F. Cold snow is dry snow, there is little or no water on the surface of the flakes, which will keep the snow from packing down into ice. Warm snow will congeal into ice as it's packed down by cars and create a slick surface sheet. 4WD will make no difference in warm snow on a hill. I was able to go out in 8 inches of unpacked and dry snow that was 15F and had no problems in 4WD using standard M&S all weather tires. I even had no problems panic stopping on packed snow when it was 5F. The tires liked to stick just fine. But when it got warmer the other day, above 28F, it got very slippery and icy. I watched as 4WD vehicles were spinning all four wheels trying to get traction on our hills. Slush is even worse. It just lubricates the tires with water over ice, no matter how much you try to move. It's like driving on wet snot.

snoopy · Post by **snoopy** » Wed Feb 12, 2014 9:01 am

We're supposed to get 3-5" more tonight.

I was hoping for a snowy winter... and got it... now I'm ready for spring.

Ferno · Post by **Ferno** » Wed Feb 12, 2014 11:13 pm

tunnelcat: as soon as you put any pressure on snow, you get a layer of water no matter what the temperature is. The only constant is the lower the temperature, the faster the water will refreeze.

those people you watched spinning their tires? they had no idea what they were doing. Just let off the throttle and let the water refreeze. then you start to climb ever so slowly by using a smidgen of throttle.

When I was coming home one day on the highway, we had a big snowfall that turned to slush. I was passing people who got stuck on the side of the road. And I was driving a 25 year old front wheel drive car. Even when it came to climbing the hill on the way home. All I did was keep a gentle pressure on the throttle and a constant speed. Got home in about an hour on what normally takes 35 minutes.

Duper · Post by **Duper** » Thu Feb 13, 2014 12:41 am

hehe Don't listen to him TC. He's not driven in NW snow before.

AceCombat · Post by **AceCombat** » Fri Feb 14, 2014 7:17 am

mostly cleared up and rising above 32 in GA

Tunnelcat · Post by **Tunnelcat** » Fri Feb 14, 2014 1:49 pm

Duper wrote:hehe Don't listen to him TC. He's not driven in NW snow before.

Yeah, NW snow can be a killer. It's usually at or around 32F. Nice and slippery and gooey. But I disagree with Ferno on the slipperiness of colder snow. I never had a problem driving in Colorado, where the snow is usually cold and dry. In Oregon, I went out on the hard packed roads in December when it was 5F one morning. Up and down hills, panic stops, no slipping or ABS cutting in at all. And there was NO gravel on the roads at the time either. The city had slacked off. This time with the recent storm on Saturday, the warmer 25F snow was pretty deep and sloppy. Holy cow, what a snot fest that was to drive in. Even in 4WD, I had to very careful about applying brakes or accelerating. It didn't take much for the wheels to break free. But there's one thing I do follow around here in a college town. Don't go out when everyone else HAS to go out. I may not slip around too much because I've had the practice over the years. But I can guarantee you that quite a few OSU students have never driven in snow, and WILL have a problem. I don't want to be anywhere on the roads when they are. I do like my car's sheet metal to be undented.

Ferno · Post by **Ferno** » Sat Feb 15, 2014 12:11 pm

Duper wrote:hehe Don't listen to him TC. He's not driven in NW snow before.

I'll put canadian prairie snow and bc interior snow up against pacific northwest snow any day.

Tunnelcat · Post by **Tunnelcat** » Sat Feb 15, 2014 4:42 pm

Ferno wrote:
Duper wrote:hehe Don't listen to him TC. He's not driven in NW snow before.
I'll put canadian prairie snow and bc interior snow up against pacific northwest snow any day.

Is that s slipperiness or stickiness contest?

Here's a 4WD truck trying to get up a hill in Seattle. All four wheels are spinning too.

[youtube]Y8oPHwRQ7s8[/youtube]

Then you have these drivers trying to get around in just 2 measly inches of snow fer crying out load. We definitely win for slipperiness.

[youtube]r6zlkP8thkk[/youtube]

Grendel · Post by **Grendel** » Sat Feb 15, 2014 8:07 pm

Welcome to the NW...