One of the interview questions I got from a pledge this term was, “What is your favorite weather?” When I replied, “First snow,” another pledge nearby said, “Aw, how romantic.” I dunno about that, but I do think there’s something really special about the first snowfall of the season. Brings back memories of my childhood, I guess. Speaking of which, Drew M and Lindsey had never seen snowfall before last night. And what a time to see it!
As we tried to make our way back to Davis from Reno, Eddie and Sophia C, who had gone ahead of us, called back to warn us that snow chains were required at Donner Summit. We frantically ran around looking for chains for Kimball’s car, and it didn’t help that he had an odd wheel size of 225÷50÷16.
After that, we cruised along slowly through the horrible traffic up to the summit, and all the guys piled out to put on the chains. As we were finishing up, a trucker tells us that chain control had just been lifted, and that we should take them off. So we did, and piled back into the cars, and were on our merry way. We actually hit the heaviest snowfall and iciest roads after that point, and were wondering to ourselves why chain control was lifted at all. Kimball had some trouble controlling his car, and actually had to pull an emergency pit to the shoulder.
On the plus side, Drew M and Lindsey got to see falling snow and stick their hands out the sunroof to feel the flakes. But we were also scared shitless about what to do to help everyone get home safe. As we shuffled people between Tim and Joe M’s cars to send help back to Kimball, he managed to rock his way out of the snowbank and crawl forward to meet us.
The worst of it was over, and we hit low enough elevations that we just had to worry about slick roads from melted snow, rather than roads that were actually iced over. We all manged to get home safe, but it was up in the air for a while.
Hopefully the people coming home today have better luck than we did.
i’ve driven in similar conditions without chains, i don’t think you really need them as long as you have decent all-season tires. i’m betting that kimball had summer tires on his car which is why he was slipping so badly.