Yup, gearing up for it. Unfortunately it would have to come on the day of our holiday party. Sigh.
— Alan
Scuzz
1902
I guaranteed this storm by booking this weekend at the state campground in Morro Bay. Every time we try that in the winter it rains buckets. Hopefully we get set up Thursday before the heavy stuff hits.
JMR
1903
Winds woke me up at 4:30 and out of curiosity I decided to check out airtraffic on Flightaware and saw this poor C172 (the only generation aviation plane crazy enough to fly in this crap) doing 40 kts ground speed returning to Merced after diverting from its destination of Chico.
This is the kind of weather that’s fun to fly in in FSX and not the real thing. Good luck little Cessna.
Looks like we’ll be getting the table scraps of this storm tomorrow. Currently seeing a 94% chance of rain then. In my two dozen years of living here, I’ve seen a 90% rain forecast maybe a handful of times.
We’re gonna get hit here in LA tomorrow as well. Hopefully the sky will dump buckets on us.
“I CAN MAKE IT! I CAN MAKE IT!”
CraigM
1907
Ha, when we had flooding like that near Chicago last spring I nearly couldn’t make it to work.
Granted I drive an hybrid, so anything I suspect could even be more than 4" I ‘NOPE’ out hard.
Snowstorm in Toronto today caused traffic chaos. Apparently the 401 was jammed and at a standstill for 90km (55 miles),
Now this is why you stay the hell off the roads in a winter storm warning.
123-vehicle pileup on I-94
One vehicle after another sliding right into the pileup.
And there’s a matching one on 23 in York Township. So you can’t drive E/W or N/S in Michigan at the moment (well, sort of).
Can someone explain this to a lucky soul who never lived in a snowy place?
In Florida we get torrential rains on a regular basis, and stopping power is compromised (not as bad as when there is ice, of course), so we drive slower (most of the time). I try to always make sure that I can come to a dead stop at the end of where I can see to if needed when I’m driving, which given visibility sometimes means going rather slow.
There is no way these people could see the pile of stopped cars right in front of them and they were driving pretty fast. Is that normal? Drive and pray nothing is going wrong on the road ahead of you? As a non-snow person, that sounds fekkin insane!
I know people need to get to work and get things done, etc, but is this normal or a fluke?
It’s a combination of the usual things; impatience, overestimating driving ability, overestimating the vehicle’s ability, inexperience with rare conditions, etc. People also become habituated to the situation and speed they’re driving, making it easier to misjudge both speed and stopping distance if the situation changes rapidly. And obviously, slippery snow and ice are very unforgiving of errors and lapses in concentration.
It’s a combination of the usual things; impatience, overestimating driving ability, overestimating the vehicle’s ability, inexperience with rare conditions, etc. People also become habituated to the situation and speed they’re driving, making it easier to misjudge both speed and stopping distance if the situation changes rapidly. And obviously, slippery snow and ice are very unforgiving of errors and lapses in concentration.
People drive like dicks, they speed, they don’t care for anyone else on the road, they are usually at the least distracted by 2-3 things in their car while driving, and almost never have 2 hands on the wheel. I have driven about 35,000 miles a year, for the last 12 years. I have seen all kinds of crazy shit.
I almost got rear ended on the PA turnpike yesterday , by a guy driving a Chevy Camaro going 70+ mph in blizzard like conditions.
Kelan
1915
A little bit of everything, I suppose. I drive E/W across US-10 in the middle of Michigan for work and there are many times where the roads are clear and you come upon some open farmland on either side and snow blows across causing blizzard like conditions and icing the road over that can completely catch you off guard.
I see plenty of idiots frequently, though. One time sticks in my mind a few years ago where a guy passed me going 80+ and I actually saw him wipe it into the median. I have never seen a guy plow into the ditch that hard before. But it is true, even in Michigan here where we get plenty of snow and icy conditions each year, it seems the first storms are always the worst as many forget how to drive it in again and when there is a lot of ice involved, there isn’t really a lot you can do sometimes. Driving 60+ in normal snowy conditions on the freeway that isn’t deep is normal for most in my daily commute, but add ice and blizzard conditions into the equation and you get trouble and it can be hard to see them coming at times.
Kelan
1916
And just to add to this thread, it is freaking cold out there this morning! I hate working Saturdays and hate it even more when my truck says it is -4°F outside. I wanted to stay home and play Elite all day! Ugh!
ShivaX
1917
It’s normal for the most part. It’s not all that rare for visibility to hit basically nothing. No job in the Midwest gives a fuck if visibility is nothing, you’ll show up or get canned. You can maybe call in, but they wont be happy about it and you can’t do it many times. Add in long commutes (20+ miles isn’t that rare) across open highways for most people and things are bound to happen.
Thanks for the replies.
I am terrified of snowstorms now and shan’t be moving to a snowy place any time in my lifetime.
As ridiculous as this may sound…you get used to it.
Given that thousands, if not 10s of thousands, of cars drive that stretch of 94 every day (it is one of the most heavily traveled stretches of highway in the country), even a crash of 150 cars is just a drop in the bucket.
I used to commute on 94 the other direction–Ann Arbor to Dearborn. Roughly 35 miles each way. And it was a rare day when there wasn’t at least one accident on the side of the road on that 35 mile stretch. People drive like fucking idiots on it. At least once per week you have massive hours-long backups after somebody does something stupid and ends up blocking the highway with wreckage and rescue vehicles.
KevinC
1920
It’s been raining for the last few days here in Utah. In mid-January. It was like this in December as well, I think we’ve only had one snow storm this entire season (on Christmas).
It’s one thing to not have snow here because there’s been no precipitation, it’s another to not have any because it’s all been coming down as rain, even overnight. Last winter was similar to this as well. Even the mountains are looking pretty bare compared to what they usually are.
