Well, we have had 19.3" of snow in the last 13 hours and are under a Blizzard warning for the next 5 hours. The prediction is for another 5.7 inches of snow by noon tomorrow with 2.1 of it coming in the next 5 hours. The current wind is 28 knots gusting to 35 so this stuff is blowing and drifting all over the place. I spent most of the afternoon plowing rural driveways around here and my 400 foot drive now an 11 PM looks like I never touched it.

My daughter is working the 11 PM - 7 AM shift. There are 5 in her department. Four of them have already reported off with two of them sitting in the ditch on the way to work. We do not know the status of the other two.

A year ago we installed Yokohama Avid Ascend tires and she drove on them all last winter. She had 130 inches of snow last winter and those tires did the job.

Well, this year we bought some dedicated snow tires and steel wheels especially for winter use. I talked to her tonight and told her to call me if she got stuck and I would come out with one of our 4wd vehicles to get her. She just telephoned and said these new tires are great. She got to work early and is the only one there for her shift. Her commute is only about 17 miles one way on rural road between Indiana and Michigan along the Lake Michigan Lake Front. This is prime snow belt area.

So here is what we installed and they are highly recommended by her for deep snow. We did not install the optional studs.

http://www.tirerack.com/tires/tires....oModClar=Sport

They were less than $400 out the door mounted and balanced on new wheels including new matching lug nuts.

So based on her experience these are highly recommended.

We did not install the TPMS sensors. These will only be used for 3 to 4 months in the winter. She will swap back to her regualr tires for the rest of the year. She can swap these in less than 30 minutes using a floor jack, impact, and torque wrench. It also is a great time for her to rotate tires since all 4 will be off. She painted the tire pstions on the back side of the tires with white out ($.99 at Walmart) when she removed them. This way she can tell where to reinstall them (rotated) next spring and by next fall the white out will be gone.

 

u have an awesome daughter. she does her own tire rotations. =)

 

My daughter does her own mechanical work when necessary. She is a college grad with an MBA and only weighs 115 pounds. She will tackle just about anything mechanical. She has replaced two engines in different Blazers. She does things like in tank fuel pumps, water pumps, brakes, etc. She enjoys doing the work and hates paying inflated prices for inept mechanics.

 

And another American sees the value of a dedicated "snow tire". Cheers from the land of "winter tire" users

P.S. I really didn't like studded tires when I tried them. I think they perform less well in snow than studless but better on ice.

 

I agree.

Besides living here in snow the belt, I have worked a couple of winters in the Yukon and in Alaska. Snow was not the big thig there as much as the occasional deep cold. Snow does not happen much when it gets very cold so what snow we had was just plowed out of the way.

I've only owned one set of studded tires. I think their usefulness is very limited because where there is ice, it will probably only be there overnight or one day at the most . After that we are back to clean or snow covered roads. The things are noisy on clean roads and I do not need to hear them for 3 or 4 months out of the year. My solution is to say slow down if it is icy.

Regular snow tires are a different story. We got a total here 24 inches of snow yesterday and then high winds. Some areas are cleaned naturally by the wind and others were highly drifted. The plows will knock down the drifts but we still have lots of snow covered roads to use snow tires on. I plowed my 400 foot driveway twice yesterday and the wind has drifted it back to about 12 to 14 inches deep again in two places. So I'll go out and clean those two places again now that the wind has died down. That should take care of it for this storm.

So snow tires yes.
Studs no.