The conditions outside are treacherous. I actually cancelled my morning plans because I'm not willing to go out and drive.
If you don't know me well your first thought might be 'oh what a pussy' (or if you know me well that might be your thought for some other reason, but I digress!) but first I want to point out that we often have tough enough winters where I live so I'm used to having to drive in snow. However, freezing rain can be a bitch.
Overnight there was a slow accumulation of freezing rain, and now everything is coated in a fairly thin, fairly invisible layer of ice (black ice). This means there is almost no friction being provided by road surfaces, making acceleration, deceleration, and turns very difficult. Now, if you are aware of this and drive very slowly in a car with the right drivetrain, you can certainly get from point A to point B, even in these conditions. One look out my window convinced me not to try.
I watched a few cars driving by this morning. The first one tried to stop at a stop sign and failed. The second one seemed to make it through okay despite the slippery road, but then the third one somehow managed to accidentally turn their car 45 degrees on a straightaway. I simply don't trust other drivers to realize how dangerous the roads are and adjust their driving accordingly. I'd say more than 50% of the cars I've seen go by have tried to mostly stop at the stop sign in view, and failed. One guy tried to turn (had turn signal on), slipped halfway through the intersection, gave up on trying to turn, and just went straight!
The roads will probably clear up within a couple of hours. In the meantime I'm staying put.
When there is a steady freezing rain and the roads are coated in ice, unless you live in one of the few places in the world where people are actually used to this (I've only ever seen this a few times before), call in sick and stay home.
I feel you micro. The roads are pretty crappy where I live too (if you don't know wtf I'm talking about, I met you last year at a barcraft in Mineola).
I've had such bad frozen rain that I fell down when I got out of the car to open my gate.
With good tires you can actually drive easier than walk. You just have to acknowledge that you have a stopping distance of about 1000 meters if your going slowly (I'm not kidding) and drive really carefully. Like less than 20 kmh in the city.
Pretty out of the question where i love(Mountains, North Carolina) since so many of ours roads are S curves or have straight drops on either side. + finding a road without a hill is pretty much impossible, and alot of them have stop signs at the top or bottom making stopping in ice pretty dangerous business.
yeah i nearly just killed myself walking up my street on a hill, and then on my steps that i salted early this morning (it is still freezing rain here). fuck this noise
I completely agree with you. Today, my dad had to drive me because the roads were so bad. Normally, he is 10 miles above the speed limit, but today, he was actually 10 miles below the speed limit. I just hope the roads clear up soon.
I live in New Jersey and the roads have been awful for the past couple of days. Today it randomly jumped to 50 degrees and everything's melting, so it's more slush than ice now.
pah, I have ridden my bicycle through the aftermaths of the worst ice rain here in the last 20 years or so. Went to a friend's place in the morning, the rain came down and dumped like a half inch of pure ice on the frozen ground, had to go back home in the evening. Of course I kept far away from any public road with traffic, but most ppl were smart enough to stay indoors, and even then (winter tires on cars were not yet mandatory) almost everyone had proper tires and at least going at a crawl was possible.
A friend of mine drove home safely, stepped out of the car, lost his footing and injured his arm.
edit: what I wanted to say: It's quite safe if you can drive, if you have to go where other people would be going AND if you live in some place where they are not used to bad conditions, I wouldn't go.
additional comment about the bad conditions: My driving instructor did a powerslide with the handbrake in bright daylight with me in the car, and even my father did that sometimes when the road was snowy.
ah yeah, people who dont shovel are fucking assholes. my neighbors across the street are lovely individuals. 3 fam house. they shoveled as the snow started (first time they did it at all this year!!) so that theres still like 2 inches on their walk... now mixed with aforementioned ice.
Theyre also the same type of assholes that cone off spots on the street.
On January 06 2014 02:50 QuanticHawk wrote: yeah i nearly just killed myself walking up my street on a hill, and then on my steps that i salted early this morning (it is still freezing rain here). fuck this noise
holy shit i forgot about "noise." what a dope word.
Good call on staying home. I backed out of my driveway to go to work this morning, put the car in drive, pushed the gas, and then didn't move again for quite some time. I got stuck in my road literally at the end of my driveway. Fortunately the main roads were all salted and I finally got moving and made it to work. However, making it home might be a different challenge here today since the temp is quickly dropping to about 20 below from 5 above this morning (C). Stay safe and stay warm. Icy roads are no time to 'man up' and do something dangerous.
The weirdest part about the weather today was the 45 degree change in temperature from the morning to evening. The 50+ mph wind gusts aren't very fun to deal with when the roads are iced over either.
Still in the negatives ... radiators still not functioning at full capacity; they were doing well yesterday morning but they turned off in the middle of the day, switched back on briefly last night for like an hour, then went offline for the rest of the night. Fucking cold, man.
EPT
