I live in Canada (London, Ontario). Somewhat cold in the winter (certainly not
as cold as as Winnipeg) but very snowy. I drive with winter tires on all my
winter cars and it makes a huge difference. Since I have been using snow tires,
I can't recall ever getting stuck anywhere, even when we got almost 40 inches
of snow over a 48-hour period a couple of years ago.
For years now, the tire dealers here have avoided the term "snow tire" and have
instead referred to them as "winter tires", because it's not the snow but the
cold that affects tires the most (although obviously snow and cold go mostly
hand-in-hand). The reasoning is this: when a summer or all-season tire gets
cold, its rubber compound gets hard and loses the ability to grip the road
surface. The magic temperature at which this starts happening has been marketed
as 7 degrees C (about 45 degrees F). The rubber in winter tires is manufactured
to stay soft, and therefore grippy, at much lower temperatures than
summer/all-season (marketed here as 3-season) tires. So, even on dry pavement,
non-winter tires will provide poor traction at -10 or -20 degrees; add slush,
snow or ice to that and you have no hope of controlling your vehicle.
I usually change over to winter wheels & tires when the average daily
temperature gets around 5 degrees C (about 40 degrees F) for any length of
time. I don't switch wheels/tires back to regular tires until it warms up in
the spring, even if the temperature warms up for a while or I drive somewhere
warmer; yes, winter tires wear faster in warmer weather, but I'm not about to
change wheels/tires every couple of weeks.
So remember, it's not the snow, it's the cold!
John P. New
London, Ontario, Canada
On January 20, 2016 10:54:11 AM Scott Hall wrote:
> I've got a stupid question: when do you use snow tires?
>
> For example, it snowed six inches or so here last night, and I know I'd
> like some snow tires right now since the roads are still covered with snow
> and slush and only a few bare patches of pavement. By tonight, though,
> everything will have been plowed repeatedly and driven over such that the
> only snow I'll drive over will be a few patches in our parking lot before
> they melt by the end of this week.
>
> So...what do you do when you're only driving over actual 'snow' a few times
> a year? Do you still put on snow tires and leave them on until spring?
> It'll be cold here until early March, but I'll only drive on actual snow a
> few minutes per year. The rest of the time there will be paved roads.
>
> I'd ignore the whole issue, but even on my .8 mile commute home last night
> I got sideways at every intersection and the traction control and stability
> control were going crazy. And I never got over 20 m.p.h. It was a
> TREMENDIOUS amount of fun (it was 11:00 p.m. and I was the only one out)
> but there was really no question of going anywhere except home and then
> staying there. If I'd had to have driven somewhere, well, that would have
> been bad.
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