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1) Yes, I have. The winter has "surprised" us many times and I've driven in slush and snow. I consider it dangerous if you aren't super super careful, especially if you don't have traction control system.
2) Driving with winter tyres on bare asphalt doesn't affect the driving too much. They are noisier, but do more damage to the pavement than your driving experience. During the time when all cars didn't have power steering, turning the wheel became a bit more heavy. But if you buy for example Nokia winter tyres (yes, they do them too), you can well drive 3 winters with them. Not a big investment dividing them with 3.
Damage to pavement? Is that because your winter tires are usually studded?
Here you can stud them but very few people will do this. Unless they live in a really remote area.
So the main "danger" in driving on bare pavement (or in warm temperatures) with winter tires is that it destroys the rubber much much faster as the winter tire rubber is much softer.
I've actually driven an entire summer on winter tires because I was getting rid of the car in the autumn and did not want to invest in summer tires. There was not that big a difference in handling on the road.
Have you tried to drive on snow with summer tires before? If yes, which of the following situations is the driving comfort using them closer to?
1. Driving on snow with summer tires
2. Driving on bare asphalt
As I've never lived in a snowy location I've never used winter tires but boy, driving on snow unequipped is a pain.
Here they sell "four season" tires that are kind of OK in the snow as long as it's not too deep and that you don't go into the mountains.
For the first 20 years I had a car this was all I had on my vehicles. It was fine and I never had any problems.
But a few years ago the Quebec government made snow tires mandatory from Dec. 15 to Mar. 15. So I had to buy winter tires for the first time. I did notice a difference on the snow - it was better than the four season tires for sure.
But note that these tires do not have studs (crampons).
There are holes in my tires for studs but I don't use them.
In most parts of Canada where there are no laws on winter tires, I'd say the majority of people are on "four season" tires.
Yeah, but aren't all records once in a 100 year events? Last month alone Helsinki airport had two days with 20°C+ anomalies, similar to Churchill's record.
Conted the number of days with 15°C+ negative anomalies on the mean since 1960 for those 4 random cities. Helsinki is outta the more variable one from that panel:
72 Helsinki
13 Churchill
6 New York
6 Bucharest
Btw I only looked at January for NYC before, considering all three winter months the difference is much larger, at 23°C.
Where'd you get those numbers from? When look at similar data, I download from the NCDC.
To me it's pointless to do this post. Deserves more a video explaination so you can play a loop and use the cursor and stuff.
But here's a current look at whats happening. Orange lines = 500mb Upper Flow. Black lines are the Surface Pressure.
We got the Ridge in the West (hallelujah!) Where's it been? That is making the Jet stream dive down south in Eastern U.S
We have the trough in the East which naturally rotates and keeps moving, this will keep snow chances around for days!
When the trough moves off the coast a new coastal storm develops.
Meanwhile Clippers are diving down bringing more snow into Eastern U.S and chances for southeast Snows.
After this week, rinse, wash, repeat, more cold and snow chances in the East Into mid month as these troughs rotate around the Vortex which will be in Quebec
Amazing this is happening again after mid January like last year. Only difference is it doesn't seem to be historically cold for a long duration. But here it is.... this is the setup needed for a Cold and Snowy Eastern U.S
Woah, Saturday night's (Sunday morning's) forecast is down to 2 F / -17C for my area.
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