Stuck on I20 EB 14 hours, still sitting.

Handbasket wrote:


Thank you, sir! That is exactly what many folks from up north just don't understand. Here in the southern mountains, we not only have that kind of freezy skid stuff to deal with, we also have hills, blind curves, and heavily shaded spots to complicate matters.

I had a rather prolonged...errr, 'discussion' with a northerner on the B forum a few years ago... he'd 'never been stuck' in the winter in a RWD B van without chains, and thought all my suggested preparations absurd. Of course, he apparently lived in the Canadian flatlands.

Jim, "Manure occureth."

Your "southern mountains" describe what it is like up north where I live. In fact, I know many places in NY, Pa, Mass, Vt, NH, and Maine that fit "hills, blind curves, and heavily shaded spots". I don't think I have seen bare pavement in two weeks now, but everybody is driving on the snow covered ice, and generally speaking, doing quite well at it. But many of us run snow tires all the way around on two wheel drive cars. In my book, that is better than 4 wheel drive! Stuck??? Not in years, and I live in the snow belt south of Buffalo, NY. And yes, I have driven in some of your southern snow and ice storms when the locals could not do it. Went through one way back in the '70s in Atlantic that was very similiar to what just hit there.

But I will admit, we do have lots of plow and salt trucks that are big enough to handle the work that needs to be done. And our local and state governments contract with lots of big salt companies to purchase highway rock salt, we have huge piles of the stuff. The average highway department plow truck run is 40 miles, and the drivers do it over and over again for about 15 hours a day, and then another shift comes on to continue plowing the same 40 miles of road. We just know how to deal with the stuff! And I don't expect you to, cause you don't have it happen that often.