Now I live in a major city on the great lakes. We don’t stop for snow, it happens too often and th economic impacts would be tremendous. So what happens is massive fleets of snowplows and salt trucks are deployed to clear the streets. The result is that in spite of large snowfalls and ice accumulation, the major roads are relatively clear for the morning commute. So there is no snow on the road, no snow falling, only snow from uncleared cars. It does affect visibility, and it does result in dangerous chunks of ice blowing off of vehicles. Just because you don’t notice it doesn’t mean the rest of us are lying about it.

I noticed something else: you mentioned “climbing on the roof”. Who said anything about climbing on the roof? How about drive a smaller car? Buy a long handled snow brush? Run the heat for a while while you clean the rest of the car and the stuff on the roof can be pushed right off. Are you really so short and your car so big that you can’t reach it with a long handled snow brush (or a broom)? Or is it just an excuse because you don’t want to get up a little earlier or do a little work?

“Erm … or an accurate spectrophotometer? Physical thermometers are not used for truly precise temperature readings.”

a so called ‘accurate spectrophotometer’ is only accurate up to a point. Are you certain that kind of an instrument lets all the radiation in? Does it register or fade in the circuits? On the latter sentence, it seems you agree with the surfacestations study, good for you.

@nigel
My peeve is people who drive with their parking lights on at highway speeds (not legal in most of the US). Some people can’t figure out the difference between “parking” lights and “driving” lights. Just FYI, many modern vehicles do not allow you to use just the parking lights. Mine has ALWAYS ON parking and driving lights – it’s a proven SAFETY FEATURE (though it’s annoying at drive-up windows where you SHOULD turn your driving lights off, people). You’ re recommendation is also opposite to both US driving instruction and the law – at least in the states I’ve lived in (parking lights are only to be used while parking and at parking speeds).

@arlo
“It’s like the low fat meme that has dominated our unskeptical minds for the past half century, ignoring the diet of our paleolithic ancestors for 2 million years, who we evolved from, in favour of the diet we adopted a mere 10 thousand years ago. Every study that confirms our unthinking idea that low fat / less animals is healthier is nodded at with sage approval, while every study / culture that shows that high fat / more animals / less grains/legumes/dairy is healthier is instantly dismissed.”

So, seems that you’re saying: since they died young, so should we. And any discovery that helps us live healthier and longer than our predecessors should be discarded.

“We’re so convinced that fat is bad that we are even feeding our dogs “whole grain” dog foods, like their wolf ancestors were master agriculturalists.”

Dogs will drink antifreeze or kill themselves with chocolate or chicken bones if you let them. Are they better decision makers than veterinary nutrition studies?

@Nigel Depledge – Being in the UK, if your car does get some snow on it, can’t you just wait 20 minutes for the next rain to clear it off?

Heh. well, when I lived in Southampton (on the south coast) I didn’t have a car, but that would have worked. I never saw snow there last more than about 3 days.

Currently, I live in the north of England (next time you’re in the UK, try to take the time to visit Durham* – it’s a gem), and snow will occasionally last for about a week. When I lived in Scotland, the snow would typically last for a week at a time, and sometimes lasted for about 10 days (and white Christmases were commonplace, yay!).

I seriously used to think everyone must be exaggerating about how much it rains in England until I spent 10 days there. By the fourth day I was getting a little bummed by the partly- to completely cloudy skies, then a local commented on how lucky I was that the weather was so nice during my stay – and they were serious! I love living at the base of the Rockies and having 300+ sunny days per year. It’s worth dealing with every snow-covered idiot on the road.

I think I would get bored if the weather were the same every day.

I don’t mean to sound negative about the UK. It’s a really beautiful place and all the people we met were lovely. Plus – there’s the shortbread. I could easily live there if I didn’t suffer from mild seasonal affective disorder. That’s the main reason I wanted to leave the San Francisco are – great place to live, but not enough sunshine for me.

Wow. And here was me thinking “the West Coast gets the sunshine…”.
Does that mean the Beach Boys have been lying to me?

*Not the one in North Carolina. The one after which that one was named.

Huh? Kelvin system makes sense? Thought it is based on imaginary point of zero that has no relation to reality?

Er, no … absolute zero really exists. Just because making a machine to achieve it is really, really hard (or perhaps unfeasible) doesn’t mean we should abandon it.

It is an 1800-century fabrication,

Erm … I don’t know what century you’re living in, but I’m in the 21st, so we have a long wait for the 1800th.

and makes sense only to those that imagine things like an accurate thermometer.

Erm … or an accurate spectrophotometer? Physical thermometers are not used for truly precise temperature readings.

How do you create the degrees Celcisus (°C) symbol in html here?

I wish I knew how to do that ..

Switch on NumLock
Hold down Alt
Using the number pad, type the numeral 248
Lo: °
(this doesn’t work using the row of numeral keys at the top of the keyboard. I don’t know why).

@Nigel Depledge: For the arguement about headlights, I drive a Saturn and have some form of headlights on all the time, so sorry if that bothers you, not something I have control over.

Yeah, Volvo have the same thing on cars they sell here in the UK.

It bugs me and it hurts my eyes, but its hard to argue against the stats from Sweden (as mentioned by another commenter), even though there are several differences in circumstance between Sweden and the UK.

According to the numbers the benefits outweigh the risks, sorry no links, this was all from the status reports on the news in Denmark in 2005 after 15 years of compulsory 24 hours headlights. The introduction of the rules in Denmark in 1990 was based on the positive numbers from Sweden that introduced the rules in 1977.

Dipped-beam headlights generally dazzle people for only short periods of time. we all have to cope with them at night, so those same coping mechanisms can be applied to daytime driving too. I cannot recall a recent journey to work when I wasn’t dazzled by at least one car using its dipped-beam headlights when it didn’t need them.

It would be nice to not have to deal with that.

Most people follow too close anyway, and in ice and snow conditions it usually gets worse. People creep up as visibility drops. Maybe they want the company?

LOL!

@Nigel – Well, here in the Northern U.S. we get drivers who after a foot of snow finished up with freezing rain will go out and make a half meter hole in front of the driver and set off for the morning commute. I mean this quite literally, half meter is in fact being generous. So not only is snow blowing off, but they’ve given themselves tunnel vision.

… and you are far enough back to avoid hitting them, but not to avoid the chunk of ice and snow they fling into the road.

OK, point taken. But you guys must be crazy to go out driving when it’s like that.

In the south of England, where snow is rarer than in the north, a fall of a couple of inches of snow can bring the nation to a halt. In the north of England and southern Scotland, it takes a good 5 – 6 inches to have the same impact.

So you’re talking about levels of snowfall that I have never even seen, let alone tried to drive in.

I seriously used to think everyone must be exaggerating about how much it rains in England until I spent 10 days there. By the fourth day I was getting a little bummed by the partly- to completely cloudy skies, then a local commented on how lucky I was that the weather was so nice during my stay – and they were serious! I love living at the base of the Rockies and having 300+ sunny days per year. It’s worth dealing with every snow-covered idiot on the road.

I don’t mean to sound negative about the UK. It’s a really beautiful place and all the people we met were lovely. Plus – there’s the shortbread. I could easily live there if I didn’t suffer from mild seasonal affective disorder. That’s the main reason I wanted to leave the San Francisco are – great place to live, but not enough sunshine for me.

@Chanelle – I usually don’t leave my car unattended, I just let it run while I clear it off.

And speaking of having an order, I always scrape my car from the top down, then I do side windows after the top, windshield after the side, because it allows the maximum amount of work to be done by the defrosters and the minimum by me.

But, if your have been paying attention you will know that °C are not an SI unit. The SI unit of temperature is the Kelvin.

Yes, the Kelvin system for temperature makes most sense I agree but I’m quite happy with using degrees Celsius for normal weather.

Question for you if I may please :

How do you create the degrees Celcisus (°C) symbol in html here?

I wish I knew how to do that ..

BTW. Worked out a way to remember the spelling of Celsius assuming I’ve got it right here (checked with how somebody else – Nigel Depledge I think – has it too.) Think three parts : Cel for “Cell”, ‘Si’ italian or spanish for ‘yes’ & ‘us’ so think a homeless drunk Italian or Spaniard saying “Cells for us? Si!” Dunno if that helps anyone else but hope so.

I must disagree. I will gladly put up with a bit of inclement weather in order to be able to enjoy everything else about Idaho.

@Nigel Depledge: For the arguement about headlights, I drive a Saturn and have some form of headlights on all the time, so sorry if that bothers you, not something I have control over.

Finally, for the original topic, I totally agree. I’ve had to, on more than one occasion, run my windshield wipers to keep clearing snow coming from other vehicles, both in front and beside me, it isn’t just from tailgating. I don’t drive all that much, and I still see people every day who don’t have enough windshield cleared. Sometimes, though, the melted, and then refrozen stuff just doesn’t scrape off. As for leaving the car running, it was on the local radio lately, when a radio host had her car stolen for doing exactly that, that it is illegal (here in Idaho, anyway) to leave a running vehicle unattended, because it encourages theft.

I always brush as much as possible off my car before going out on the roads, but even so, some of the fine stuff still comes off while driving.

Gabriel Fahrenheit lived in a village that had extensive dairy farms surrounding it. The value for “0″ was the coldest day in the the village the winter he was setting up the scale. For “100″ he used the body temperature of a cow. Really.

He at least gets credit for being the first to quantify temperature.

- Jack

Somehow open door and get brush out
Clear off vents for front windshield
start engine, all defrosters to full
sweep off all snow (from roof to bumper)
Scrape, scrape, scrape. Even a couple minutes of defrost helps it all break up.

I admit I don’t mind if I still have ice on the passenger side of the windshield. I also use the winter windshield wiper fluid (defroster stuff.) A quick squirt of that always helps finish off the work.

And does the beneift outweigh the risk?

(The risk being: potential for getting dazzled; objects lit up distract you from noticing objects that are not lit up; and headlights obscure direction signals – perhaps not relevant in the Australian bush, but very relevant on the busy roads around most of the UK.)

According to the numbers the benefits outweigh the risks, sorry no links, this was all from the status reports on the news in Denmark in 2005 after 15 years of compulsory 24 hours headlights. The introduction of the rules in Denmark in 1990 was based on the positive numbers from Sweden that introduced the rules in 1977.

I can’t recall being dazzled by the headlights during daytime and I have never heard or seen any news reports blaming headlights for any daytime accidents (not saying that it hasn’t happened, just that I have never heard of it).

The other argument that you hear, is that fuel consumption goes up, which is correct, but do we really want to sacrifice road safety for energy savings? If you worry about that, turn off your air-conditioner, stereo (does anybody younger than 40 call it that any more?) and/or seat heater.
Well, that point is about to be moot anyway, more cars now come with dedicated Daytime Running Lamps which uses low-consumption LEDs.