Storm stories

It took me about 2 hours to get from Lowell where I work to Leominster to pick up my car at the mechanic. What a nightmare. I carpool and my partner who drives a CRV with parttime 4WD has no snow tires. He was forced to drive around 10-15 MPH because of this. The AWD helps handling but not braking.

From Leominster to here was around 40 minutes! Not bad. Then again I have an AWD Audi with snow tires. The car is a tank in the snow (in a good way). I was passing cars, snow plows and all without IMO driving like a maniac. I do have some experience in high performance drivers ed however (been to the track etc) so I kind of do know what I'm doing. Since I'm a skier I have a fair amount of experience driving in snow too and a good driving record.

Anyway, I thought overall the plowing in the state and on the interstates was horrible. There were a lack of plows on the road, bad vis and too many folks on the road with their "all season radials" which are near useless on a snow covered road. I actually saw and passed two slow moving plows on 190 blocking traffic with their plows up! There was a horrendous snowbank in the 190/290 merge which almost hung me up but I managed to power through. Once I got on 290 in Worcester, where they had actually plowed, things were fine.

The question is, why wasn't Mass Highway plowing?! I can't understand it. They needed to be out earlier.

However in our town, I found the roads in very good shape! One exception were certain parts of Oxford st. But actually my road and most side roads were OK. Kudos to the beleaguered highway department for getting out there and clearing our roads better than Mass Highway on 190, Rt 2 and 495!

A bit of advice for drivers - we live at 600 feet above sealevel in a bit of a snowbelt. Buy some snow tires. I don't care if you have FWD. It's actually worse IMO than RWD with snows because you have a dead axle and the car will plow once you lose traction with the bad tires. Even with AWD that won't help you brake. Get snows! Either that or stay off the roads during a storm. Otherwise we wind up with what we had the other day - triple or more commutes.