[dradernh]

Originally Posted by spidy512

Have you spent a winter in Truckee? Or many winters in Truckee?

Four feet of Sierra Cement overnight? And the stuff is like cement mixed with glue. Nothing like what the rest of the Country sees as far as snow goes. I have to chuckle when I see the East coast paralyzed when they get over two feet of snow.

The problem in Truckee is chain control exist.

FWIW, I learned to drive in the snow in a 1977 Volvo 240DL. But I am willing to bet all those old Dad's, Grandpa's and Great Grandpa's would have probably chosen a AWD/4WD vehicle vs a 2WD given the opportunity.

Nope. I lived in San Francisco from the 6th grade on and had friends who moved to the Tahoe area after high school. I'd go up to visit, but always made sure I wouldn't have to deal with chains or a closed highway. Chains were a major thing when I was a kid and we were living in the mountain states. I learned a lot of new words watching people put their chains on...and taking them off!

Don't underestimate the enjoyment to be derived from 24" of the stuff a Nor'easter can dump on the East Coast. That's an un-drifted 24", mind you. I'd enjoy seeing the actual difference between Sierra Cement (which I tried skiing on...once!) and what a typical Nor'easter produces. Granted, the Sierra has traditionally had greater dumps and higher rates of snowfall during the most intense storms. Many times I had to finish up after our snow plow guy had done the basics, and the heavy, wet snow left behind after a Nor'easter is guaranteed to put hair on your chest. Ten-foot winters of that stuff is the reason we left Northern New England for a place where 8" of snow is "a lot".

Yes...chains...something to be avoided. When we first moved to NNE in the late 90s we bought a V70 T5 and asked the service manager about chains. He acknowledged that Volvo did sell chains, but that no one in the region used them. I thought that meant snow wasn't really a big thing. That was wrong; chains just weren't used up there. Nor were gutters put on the roofs of people's homes.

I learned winter driving in a Volvo 122S (aka Amazon). That was in NW Arkansas, where ice was the prevailing unpleasant winter driving condition. The town had hills to boot, so creative routes had to be found to get to work and back. Most cars couldn't move on those days (although thaws tended to arrive pretty quickly, so the place would shut down for maybe one school day at the most), but the 122S would roll away from a stop on glare ice if I just let the clutch out in 1st gear with no gas. It took me a couple of tries to figure that out. That was 50 years ago, and I have no idea what I had for tires (they weren't the "snow" tires of that period) – whatever was cheapest would be my guess!