Snow Strands Motorists Overnight on NY Highway

This story should be a cautionary note to anyone travelling this winter in a potential snow zone. These folks were lucky that authorities were able to snowmobile in and give them gasoline to keep their heaters running through the night.

I need to put more Cliff Bars in the car.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/11/AR2009121102348.html?hpid=sec-nation

Snow strands motorists on NY Thruway near Pa. line

By CAROLYN THOMPSON
The Associated Press
Friday, December 11, 2009; 9:09 PM

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- More than 100 people who spent the night in snowbound cars and trucks on a closed stretch of New York State Thruway were guided off the highway Friday, but travel remained treacherous in the southwest corner of the state and into Pennsylvania.

52-mile stretch of Interstate 90 between Dunkirk, N.Y. and Erie, Pa., which was closed because of howling winds and blowing snow about 1:30 a.m. Friday.

"People were cold, they were hungry and they were tired."

Just advised some friends in Rochester to stock up a bit.

I'm sure many people here have more but I generally keep the shovel mentioned elsewhere, a sleeping bag, ration bars, water, an emergency stove, and lots of fire making stuff in my car for just such a situation. Fortunately for me I think a night light this would be spend cozy in the back of my car (how I've spent other winter nights hunting, etc), but I bet it is terrible for others. Also, if it went for more than one night it'd be bad. I would have food, but it'd get unpleasant.

Most importantly I have descent snow tires and cables in my car. I'd rather not get stuck!

The story does make me wonder how much snow my car could go through though I've driven it (from a stop) through roughly 14 inches of unplowed fairly light snow, but as it gets heavier, it'd get harder I'm sure.

A car is a luxurious bivouac site, provided you throw in a sleeping bag or blankets. Just takes a litle foresight.

Note to self. Put the wool blankets back in the car. They were taken out due to some holiday shopping issues (only have a truck box on my pickup)

Just got through shoveling out in Ontario. Sometimes when the cops say not to drive if you can help it they really do mean it.
I have no problem waiting out a storm either at home or at friends until the storm blows over.
Sometimes being prepared can be about being prepared not to go out and get stuck.

By the way, it is nice and sunny today and most of the roads have been cleared but not all of them.
It was a pretty good dump of snow considering it was the first real snow of the season.

Apparently, the biggest problem there wasn't the depth of the snow so much as the lack of visibility. You can't do much about that. I follow a big truck in fog (etc), but if the trucks stop...

Sue

I got stuck on the MMMBT when coming back from the airport once before. We were there for about two hours, until 1:00am. Luckly my mom seems to keep 3 day's worth of snacks in her purse.

If I got stuck there again in this kind of cold, I think that Heatsheets would come in handy. The driver is SOL, it's a one person size. ^_^

Just back from the mountains where I store my teardrop trailer. Needed to retrieve some winter gear out of it.

Am now keeping a zero-degree bag in my SUV, an assortment of fleece (neck gaiters, balaclava, ear muffs, gloves), Gore-Tex boot gaiters, Smartwool ski socks and down booties. Also, chemical hand and foot warmers.

Took the Kelly Kettle out of the teardrop and put it in the car, along with a duel-fuel Coleman one-burner stove and an MSR non-stick cook kit.

And three days of dog food. Have been keeping a case of water in there for awhile.

We're going to be doing some dogsledding this winter. This article prompted me to go ahead and get the car stuck-worthy.

Dagny, keep your pup with you.

From Wikipedia: "These nomadic reindeer herders bred the fluffy, white, smiling dogs to help with the herding, to pull sleds when they moved, and to keep their owners warm at night by sleeping on top of them."

Hey, two out of three isn't bad! Make sure you have a sturdy harness and a tow strap with you!

Sue

One interesting point here is that this was the NY state thruway, which is the main E-W corridor through NY, from Buffalo to Albany and then east becoming the Mass Pike to Boston. While it's a major route, it's otherwise pretty isolated in a lot of places, and typically wide open country.

I think in some places out west they have snow plows with differential GPS so they can drive in a white out, but I haven't heard of anybody in NY having them. I have friends in Buffalo and haven't ever heard them concerned about or even mention white-outs. With the lakes they get quite a bit more snow than I do here.

In this area, where I've been for about 20 years, I've only experienced conditions of really low visibility once, and it was still possible to generally see where the road was and travel about 20 mph. A complete white-out would be a bit spooky.

LOL - Samoyeds do give new meaning to three dog night.

I'm used to 8-9 feet tall poles along most exposed roads... usually with reflectors. Those poles really helps when plowing or driving in limited visibility. Of course, a differential GPS would be a great asset as well... but if it is THAT bad, the road should probably be closed anyway.




If it is below freezing, fresh snow will be of the dry, powdery kind. It takes only a fresh breeze (19-24 mph, level 5 on the Beaufort scale) to set that snow in motion to the point that it will seriously impart visibility. In a tree-less snow covered world, even being able to see as far as 200 yards will leave you in a all white bubble with no visual clues what so ever - and whatever you do see (small bush, exposed rock) will be severely blown out of proportions. In the woods, the trees are a tremendous help to provide a reliable, familiar visual reference. Also, the trees will shelter you from the wind.

Of course, when the wind picks up it only gets worse... I've been riding a snow mobile in conditions where we had to ride two on a machine because I knew that at the worst spot, my friend would have to walk in front of me so I had a visual reference - otherwise I would tip over in the next snow drift pile. At a distance of 20 feet, I could not see him in the worst wind gusts. And he could not see me: A big, fat dark target against a white background; smack in the middle of the dark blob there is a 60 watt halogen headlamp which you can't see at 20 feet.... We would stop at each wind gust and wait for it to subside, then continue. Snow blows along the ground, so I could still navigate by small glimpses of the rock face of the mountain to my left. It was a really weird experience, I knew all the time EXACTLY where we were and there were no real dangers (no cliffs or anything), but I could not see the 3 feet high snow drift piles right in front of me. That's what friends are for, right?


Conditions will vary tremendously with local terrain and wind conditions. In the story above with visibility down to about 2-3 feet, we had only to go about half a mile to enter into the next valley and there was hardly any wind, hardly any snow drift, we could see for miles... just a nice, overcast day. That was rather special, and shows just how much conditions can vary locally.

What I went awayfrom on this was that most people don't seem to be able to relize that the world is still dangerous. That the comon person thinks that the roads will always be pasable. People forget that sometimes mother nature will conqure man, and she will AWAYS win when she wants to.


I have a quad cab truck and often have to fill the center of the back seat with gear. Though I am thinking of adding a Taneau (totaly misspelled that word) to give the truck a bigger storeage area.


To add to the GPS thing, I did see a clip on a TV show talking about how Alaskan Snow Plow Drivers use GPS to stay on the road even when they can't see it. My thoughts on that is what happenes whne the GPS looses signal or the signal gets distored. I have had my GPS think that I was up to 30 feet off to the left or right when I was in heavy clowd cover. (disclaimer it is a Verizon Wireless cell GPS)

What I noticed was that though the drivers were being visited and having gas topped off by the athorities they never thought of extracting them. Why not put people in a sled or a ATV trailer and extract them to a warm place then return them once the plowing has resumed. Though it was 52 miles of highway, and I am here in my office and being a total armchair quaterback and wasn't there, so my thought is just that, and not intended to be a critisism. A Gama-Goat (again misspelled) from the Army could get through easly. but again just me being silly me.

The word you're lookin for is "tonneau" cover, although "truck bed cover" is a better description. I have one on my Ford Ranger; it allows me to carry a lot of gear year round. Highly recommended for those of us with trucks that only haul small stuff.

The GPS will detect this. It's part of Life As A GPS Receiver, and why some effort is needed to do it right.


30' is probably not far from the accuracy limit of a cell-phone GPS. A plow is probably using some kind of correction scheme not available to a cell-phone. Real-time Differential GPS is the likely choice.


1. The Highway patrol may have limited resources for operating in that kind of environment. It takes fewer snowmobiles to haul some fuel to stuck cars than to extract all of the people.

2. A lot of people will be reluctant to leave their cars behind - that car is a big financial asset to abandon for many people. They may also have valuables, pets, heirlooms etc they don't want to leave - the Highway Patrol doesn't want to get into that!

A consumer grade GPS can have an error like that 30ft, my new verizon phone has a gps and shows the error circle just like my garmin when I zoom in far.
High end GPS's are use to make the roads, the surveyor grade stuff is both very accurate and expensive, I've seen farming applications where the gps keeps the crop rows straight and tags where every seed is dropped.
I seem to recall a similar thing happening last year even. truck drivers were talking about it saying it wasn't a big deal for them with 50-100 gallons of fuel and a sleeper on the back of the cab with their bed, food, etc, they could stay for days.

I hope all those motorists were charged
for their rescue.

Didn't they read the weather forecast?

Sounds like candidates
for the Darwin awards.

I took the fiberglass tonneau off my truck and sold it and bought one of the roll up ones. Even though someone could easily slice through it so its less ecure it seemed like everything I ever hauled was just slightly talled than the sides of the bed to the hard tonneau wouldn't close. I prefer a truck cap but I switched to the roll up so I could take it off easily when I bought the camper.

That's the spirit!

I think I am getting into this now.

It is always interesting to hear the differences in climate and terrain we have. Here the mile poles are mostly 'regular' height, maybe 3 feet or so, with every 5th or so pole extra height, maybe 6 feet. You're obviously getting a lot more than that to warrent 8+' markers.

200 yard visability on the major highways isn't all that unusual here, but driving usually isn't a problem because you can cue off the mile markers. With the rolling or hilly terain we have, even the exposed interstates aren't bad as far as drifts go.

I don't care about the drivers, I care about their families...the drivers are obviously idiots who should never be allowed to drive again. Their vehicles should be taken from them and destroyed.

I certainly hope that they were charged for the gasoline deliveries.

Those mile markers sure help, don't they? Driving without a undisputable visual clue of where the road ends is really spooky. It doesn't have to be a blizzard - a grey, overcast day with fresh snow on the road will be hard enough. Imagine what this would be like if you put 1" of powder on top of that black tarmac:
winter road

Minor road in mountain area, good visibility conditions:


Major road at night:



This is a short video stub from inside a snow plow truck at a major route, trying to keep that mountain pass open. You can clearly see the reflector poles flashing by.
mpeg-video snow plog

As conditions worsen, the major mountain passes will allow only convoys guided by snow plows in front and at rear - you have to wait for the snow plow, and they will only allow you in the convoy if you have adequate clothing and equipment. No shovel, no rope and no winter clothing and you won't be allowed into the convoy. If it gets worse, convoys are for large trucks only (higher seat position gives a huge gain in visibility in snow drift compared to ordinary cars). Worse than that, the mountain pass is closed. There may also be night closure. I would guess that these routines are pretty similar in the mountain regions of U.S. and Alaska.

At least you have the poles. When I first moved to Ohio in the early 90's and was caught in a snowstorm on the outerbelt on the way home from work and there were no signs or light poles yet and snow driften across and wasn;t yet plowed. There was a spot where you couldn't tell where the road was and just drove by feel, if you went off the shoulder the side of the truck would sink into the grass so I knew I was off the road and owuld turn the other way a bit.

At rental car company rates.

There is an added dimension in these situations because so many of the passengers - children - aren't there by choice.

Ironic and illustrative to have these two threads going at the same time.

This reminds me of a couple snowstorms that caused avalanches along I-84 when I was in college. To get back to school (Oregon State) through the Columbia River Gorge (sea level), I had to que up in a convoy led by snowplows. Chained up my '69 Mustang's rear wheels and had chains on one front wheel for steering. Took hours to get through as we crawled along and sat still for long periods while the snowplows did their thing.

Remember a lot of people running from the convoy heading the forest to relieve themselves.

Nowadays I'm hard-pressed to think of anything that would compel me to go through such extremes to get somewhere. But back then New Year's parties were pressing business.

Am I missing something? What did these people do to warrant the vitriol?

Drive on snowy roads in snow country?

Trust authorities to tell them if it wasn't safe? Exactly as society teaches them to do?

They got stuck Thursday night. The road wasn't closed until 1:30am Friday, and they were getting them out Friday day.

What am I missing?

I think you're missing a heavy dose of sarcasm, at least in the case of my earlier posts.

Some people on this forum have a habit of immediately blaming the victims whenever a news report tells of someone getting lost or injured while out and about. In every case that I've read anyway, before any or at least many of the facts behind the event are publicized. See the debacle of a thread concerning the folks attempting to climb Mt. Hood for some great examples of posting without knowing what the hell has actually happened.

There are also a lot of people, none of whom are actually involved in search and rescue, who also use every opportunity to state that the victims of any mishaps should be billed for the cost of their rescue. None of those folks has ever, to my knowledge anyway, ever explained why fire and police services shouldn't also be billed for. Ironic since the majority of search and rescue efforts are provided by volunteers anyway who do it for their own reasons and the costs passed along to the taxpayer completely pales in comparison to things like police and fire services.

Some of us I think, are getting a wee bit tired of reading armchair analyses by people without the knowledge or the facts to have an informed opinion.

The comments made about the victims of the Mt. Hood event went beyond the pale even for this forum, in my opinion. It's been breathtaking to see what people write about things that they know virtually nothing about.

Thanks for reminding me that irony and sarcasm can be a tough thing to do well on a web forum.

The on going debate about charging people for rescue.

These are tongue in cheek a bit (at least mine was) as these kind of statements
are sometimes made in relation to hikers, climbers, etc.

See the Mt Hood thread.

Ditto John and Clearwater.

Context and irony (the Mt. Hood thread).

Oh, good, I simply missed the tongues in cheeks.

TY

I completely missed the sarcasm as well, and was relieved when you clarified that. I agree with JohnE 100%.

I missed it until I read some other posts as well. Sarcasm is easy enough to spot if you know the person pretty well, but tough on the internet sometimes. From my poor memory, it was the original purpose of the character.

Love the snowy road pictures!

Well done JohnE this is one of the best posts ever posted on this forum.