As part of our family holiday road trip, my wife and I woke up before dawn the day after Christmas to load the van and the kids and head to New York City. After checking the weather I suggested that we should delay the trip for a day so as to avoid the projected road conditions. My wife scoffed that we were much better at driving in snow than any East Coast liberal pansies and the weatherman is always wrong anyway. Reluctantly, I agreed that we could depart but that I would reserve the right to exercise my safety veto and spend the night at a hotel outside the area of the projected blizzard.

My wife drove our minivan for the first six hours and I took over as the weather turned. The next several hours were marked by reduced speeds and visibility, but conditions weren't that bad. All lanes were open, it was safe to pass and I was able to keep our speed at 50 MPH without any concern.

We stopped for fuel and dinner at my pre-determined decision point. I called my family in New York City to get a first-hand account of conditions and consulted the news and the weather map carefully on my iPhone. Based on what I could tell, conditions were not projected to get much worse than what we had already passed through. We decided to press on, for a projected 9pm arrival. I kept the wheel.

Conditions continued to worsen markedly the further East we went, and within half an hour I started looking for a place to pull over. We were down to 30 MPH or less in single file, with other lanes either difficult or impossible to use due to poor or nonexistent plowing. We passed several towns without any indication of a place to spend the night, and the off-ramps started looking much worse. It seemed like it was only a blink of an eye before we saw vehicles that had tried to get off the highway in the ditch or stuck in snow drifts.

We didn't see many plows, those that we did see were being driven grossly recklessly, in several cases swerving deliberately to run cars off the road. They were successful at least twice. The plows were driving in echelon, at very slow speeds and long intervals. After two hours of witnessing some harrowing experiences all the plows pulled off the road simultaneously. We saw no more plows actually working to keep the roads passable after that point. Since none of the plows had touched any of the offramps, we stayed with our group in single file, at speeds generally between 20-30 MPH.

As unpleasant as this was, it got worse. Traction and visibility went into the toilet, and we saw semis and SUVs pull insane stunts to try to skip ahead of the line. I worked constantly to avoid getting rammed while trying to stay where the traffic had made the snow passable. With nowhere to pull over, all I could do was push through. The ramp to I280 was closed, so the Lincoln Tunnel was out. We made for the George Washington Bridge.

By the time we reached the GWB at 11pm, we'd seen countless State Troopers stuck in snow, dozens of plows sitting by the side of the road doing nothing, and too many other vehicles stuck in snow drifts and ditches to count. I was hopeful that New York City streets would be better, but I was wrong.

There was a seven car pileup -- with two Port Authority Police cruisers wrecked -- on the ramp to the West Side Highway. Another, ten car pileup was just beyond it. Unable to get on the highway we were able to get onto Riverside Drive.

Immediately I started looking to get East, away from the river and therefore hopefully away from the wind, some of the snow, and the huge snowdrifts. Our first several attempts to get East were thwarted by steep hills and poor traction. We got stuck about seven times, four of them necessitating that I get out and use my show shovel (an old two-piece aluminum Voile that I had almost forgotten) to dig us out. We came within a hair of spending the night at 148th and Riverside Drive, but with plenty of fuel and the van upright it could have been a lot worse.

By chance we came up behind a garbage truck fitted with a snowplow, and followed it East. Things got better as we got away from the river. After that, it was a tense half-hour of carefully running red lights to stay with the plows while meandering more-or-less in the right direction. We hit some streets that had been recently plowed and were able to get to my mother's house.

Fortunately, my family all turned out with snow shovels to clear a parking space for us.

We made it without getting hurt or putting a scratch on the van, but staying home a day would have been a lot better. As a second choice, staying at the decision-point hotel for a day would have been a good choice.

I had enough foresight to have my full kit in the car including the snow shovel, and I was very conservative about fuel. Also, I have a lot of experience driving in bad conditions. Having the skills and tools to survive the situation unscathed turned out to be a very good thing, but I'd have much preferred to exhibit better judgment about going into that storm in the first place.

I think many of us can tell similar tales. Hindsight is 20/20, as they say. I'm glad you had back up items like a shovel. Could you have spent a comfortable night in the van if it came to that?

That's a white knuckle drive. I've done a few myself. Good job making it through with your 'shiny side up.'

Snow storms are tricky. By the time you suspect you're in a pickle, it's not easy to turn around without getting stranded.

One thing that may be of interest: In poor traction conditions, with all-season (a.k.a. 3-season) tires, and at low speeds, I've found that dropping the tire pressure by a third gives you a lot more "grab." This is for emergencies only, and is *not* safe for regular highway speeds; don't be dumb. But it has gotten me out of a few tight spots.

We had plenty of clothes, food, water, and gas, so we'd have been as comfortable as two adults and three small children could have been. If there had been a safe place to pull over I'd have done exactly that.

Wow - right into the belly of the Boxing Day blizzard-beast! Good that you learned a lesson without paying a high price for it (other than stress).

When I was younger and living on Mt. Hood, I routinely drove in conditions with a '69 Mustang (and tire chains at least in the trunk) that I wouldn't now with a much more capable vehicle (and better-honed sense of mortality).

Live and learn, if we're lucky.

During DC's "Snowpocalypse" last February, my car did not budge for two weeks. Decided there was just no place I needed to be bad enough to take the car (helps to live near a subway).

All your experience and preparations (and a bit of luck) paid off in a safe, and no doubt joyful, arrival. Congratulations.

I think the lesson to be learned is that we all are subject to the infamous "getthereits." The desire to arrive at our planned destination on time as planned subtly distorts our judgments of risk. I got the impression from your post that you were already having a bad feeling at your decision point, but your checking of all the reports convinced you that it was OK to go on despite that bad feeling. Every time I've ignored those feelings, I've gotten into trouble.

My winter driving philosophy is that no matter how capable my car, how skillful I am at winter driving, I am no match for those who don't know what they are doing, cause an accident and stop traffic dead. You can't dive over the cars in front of you or, in many cases, even turn around. You are simply trapped there for the duration. Happily, you avoided that.

Mr. Magnet,

I too headed directly for the blizzard on that same day (my birthday; thank you very much). My destination was the middle of Long Island (Holbrook). I was coming from Upstate NY and knew I had a 4-hour sprint in front of me. I wanted to get on the road at 7 a.m. based on the predictions of the "darts and dice guys". We actually hit the road at 7:20 a.m. We managed above-posted speed limits for a good portion of the trip. We were good until about 20 minutes after we hit the L.I.E. It started to deteriorate pretty steadily. When we arrived with about 3/4" of ice on the front of the car with two holes were melted by the heat of the headlight. I made the executive decision to come home Tuesday instead of Monday.

MoBOB

You can now say you have experience! Will help you better relate forecasts, what you see on radar, TV, etc, to help you make better decisions later.

"... checking of all the reports convinced you that it was OK to go on despite that bad feeling. Every time I've ignored those feelings, I've gotten into trouble."

Yes, me, too!

I read that 'intuition', a 'hunch', 'that bad feeling' is your subconscious recognizing the truth and trying to keep you safe, bypassing the regular reasoning process. Funny how often it's right!

Despite ignoring your misgivings, you did very well.

I've never heard of snowplow drivers acting like that!

Sue

Thanks!



I know that trick, but I wasn't carrying a compressor to re-air the tires after. I'm going to think about putting one in each car.