Growing up just outside Buffalo, NY with an October birthday, many of my early driving experience was on snow. We would practice skid recovery in large open parking lots at night. And long before drifting was cool, we would drift around corners and bank off snowbanks.
So; I thought I knew how to drive on snow, An experience a few weeks ago changed my mind. We had a light snowfall, about 1.5" just before evening drive time. I was 3/4 of the way home when I couldn’t make a turn and came within inches of hitting cars waiting at the intersection to turn. 4WD got me off of the median after collecting my wits. Then a few minutes later on the same road going down a steep hill it was all I could do to keep the rear end from passing the front end while avoiding telephone poles and stone walls.
Because the temps had quickly gone from warm to below freezing there was a thin layer of ice under the fresh snow. The road that gave me trouble hadn’t been treated the same as the road I turned off from. I was very lucky not to hit any thing. I think I learned a thing or two about rapidly changing conditions that night.
