Seattle roads are rendered heinous by frozen ice and snowpack. wicked. tomorrow is going to be hell of a commute for most people.

except those commuting by studded tire vehicle!

We are expecting some rain with temps near 27F on Wednesday, so I took my stud bike out this evening for another test run.

Vancouver Island too. Snow & blow.

Got a similar report from my beautiful correspondent in Portland... they had put chains on the buses this morning and the snow started fall early this evening.

It is going to be a zoo there tomorrow morning.

seems pretty average compared to alot of places. I guess the city of seattle isnt prepared for such weather, though.

yeah. my weather idol was wrong (cliff mass)
walked both days, all my bikes have skinny tires and there are too many hills for my poor balance to handle.

the ppl here cannot:
A) drive in the snow
B) drive in the rain
C) drive in the sun

cloudy is the only condition everyone can handle

Folks in the PNW are so not prepared for weather like this... a few inches of snow here is nothing but it will cause a state of emergency in places like Vancouver... and Toronto.

Boise is getting it too, roads where slush and wet snow this morning, since then the temp has dropped almost 15 degrees. As of now the temp is sitting at 21f slush is quickly turning to ice. It should be fun ride home for me. Went for a ride to run an errand a bit ago and decided im getting studs this year, and wouldn't you know found a guy selling some nokian's that are one season old for 20bucks. Im thinking tomorrow when its hovering around 0f there will be cars off the road everywhere here.

people were stuck on the I-5 for over 5 hours last night.

the freeze was pretty hard last night. i predict similar conditions to the storm cycle two years ago.....tepid warming followed by another snowstorm in the next day or two.


here's a picture of the travelerscheck from yesterday before it started getting nasty.


didn't have to ride to work today. maybe tomorrow.

Pumped up the 26'' Nokian stud tired bike last night, and went down the hill
for a few pints.
It was cooler on the western side of the hill than downtown,
but it chilled off by the time I came out.

slow but sure .

Seems like even riding w/o studded tires is pretty slow when it gets below 32F.

But wide, clicky tires feel really secure on thin, smooth ice.

Less secure on heavy, rutted ice... you always wonder if the studs can pull you out of the ruts.

Tire lugs pull/climb out of ruts. Studs are only good for glare ice. It's really hard to balance tire performance for the varying conditions a winter biker will encounter.

Crap... I got all geared up for freezing rain and it passed to the north. I did a 14 mile, clickety-click roundtrip in rain!!!

This page seems to say that studs to the sides of tires (on the more extremely studded tires) are for climbing out of ruts:
https://www.peterwhitecycles.com/studdedtires.asp

I've often watched studs trying to climb out of ruts.

I did my first studded ride on wed morning i did the d.i.y. way with the aggressive screws and i gotta say they performed very good on a varying of surfaces, i had to go through just about it all glare ice to the frozen solid slush to crisp snow and the rutted tire tracked ice. Granted i only studded the front so i had a little slipping in back but even getting out of the ruts the back tire followed right on out. Plus when you on dry pavement the screws sound awesome hitting the road.

its over! (yay)

..... for now

Yeah... I have the tire with 240 studs that he describes

It is a very unnerving feeling as the tire gets out of the rut. You just wonder if you are going over.

I mostly try to stay off rutted ice. Stay on the streets.

So is the weather in Seattle really as bad as Grey's Anatomy portrays it to be???!