Snow is White

It snowed here in New England last weekend, and it was one for the record books. While watching the “extreme weather team”, I saw an interview with a woman on the street just before it all started coming down. In something between a whine and a scream, she was saying something like, “I can’t believe it’s going to snow AGAIN!” (We already had about 4-6 inches on the ground.)

Excuse me. It’s January. In New England. It gets cold here. It snows here.

So I thought in this week’s blog I’d give you my wisdom on winter in New England.

First: SNOW IS WHITE. My daughter works on the program staff of a camp, and the program director has a saying, “The grass is green.” In other words, it’s not blue or red or pink. It is not what you would like it to be, it is what it is. So the first thing to understand about winter weather is that it is what it is. Snow is white. The weather gets cold. This is what we have here. If this is really too hard for you to adjust to, you’d probably be happier moving to another part of the country where the weather is more favorable to your likes. Keep in mind however, that wherever you go, you must accept that weather as well. No matter where you go, the weather is what it is.

This is an important first point to understand, we’ll call it Dave’s First Winter Law (or 1st law for short).

Ahh, there’s so much I could say. I’ll limit my comments this week to driving in winter. I don't claim to be an expert, but let me share some of what I've learned after thirty years of winter driving. I’ve found, after over 25 years of commuting to work in New England, that the worst part of winter driving is NOT the weather or the road conditions; it’s the other drivers. When the weather gets really bad, I seek out the small back roads, the ones that everyone avoids because they think the road will be terrible. It is a little snowy and slippery, but due to the lack of other cars, the travel is steady and relatively hassle-free. Meanwhile, all the others are stuck in large traffic jams on the “cleaner” highways. So here are my words of wisdom about winter driving (hey, it’s my blog.)

First Winter Driving rule: Less is More.

Sir Isaac Newton devised three laws of motion (see, I’m not the only one who likes to make up laws). Newton’s first law of motion states that things at rest will stay that way and things in motion will keep going as they are unless something acts upon them to change them. (This is called inertia.) Why is this important? Let me explain. Once a car is moving, it will want to keep moving in the same direction and speed unless you do something to change it, like apply the brakes or turn the front wheels. Note that the important part here is the wheels, or more specifically, the tires. Rubber is fairly sticky (we call this friction) so when you want to turn, the wheels “stick” to the road and the car slows down. The more dramatic the change you want to effect, the more important this stickiness is. Replace “dramatic change” with “speed” and we have the idea. The faster a car is going, the more you need to rely on the friction between the tires and the road.

OK, nerdy stuff is done. Dave’s Second Winter Law: Snow is slippery. In other words, the tires are less sticky (it’s really the road that is less sticky, but let’s not quibble.) So LESS IS MORE. When you start driving, start the car in motion, you need friction between the tires and the road. The faster you try to start or accelerate, the more friction you need. In winter, at some point, because Snow is Slippery, you will try to accelerate too fast, and the tires will start to slip. This is where this first rule comes in. If you start to accelerate, and the wheels slip, give the car LESS gas. This will decrease the stress on the tire/road friction and allow the wheels to grip. Winter, in a sense, requires backward thinking. To go faster, give it less gas. Less is More, because Snow is Slippery. (I lied about the nerdy stuff).

This applies to turning as well. Here it’s not the speed you are changing, but the direction, and remember, Newton’s first law applies here as well. A car wants to go straight. It takes friction to make it turn. In the winter, since there’s less friction, you need to go slower if you want to turn (instead of just sliding straight into the snow bank.) You see, since friction is only a big deal when you change something (direction, speed), you can go quite fast in a straight line on slippery roads. But don't be fooled. As soon as you try to change ... pow. Off the road you go. It's like the man who fell off the Empire State Building. Half way down he looked around and said, "So far, so good." (Sorry, it's an old joke.)

Same thing for stopping. Here Less is More applies as well. If you hit the brakes too hard, the wheels lock up (unless you have anti-lock brakes) and instead of stopping, you just slide. So be gentle with the brakes. Actually, be gentle with all the pedals. If you start to slide, let up on the brakes and press again, let up and press and again and again. This is known as "pumping the breaks." (If you have anti-lock brakes, you want to press firmly - check to see what your car has).

My dad taught me, when I was learning to drive in the winter, to pretend there was a full glass of water on the dashboard. Drive so that you don’t spill any. Easy starts, easy stops, slow turns.

Four-wheel drive, by the way, only helps with starting. Stopping and turning are the same, since all cars have four-wheel brakes and four tires. Maybe failure to grasp this is why you tend to see four-wheel drive vehicles off the road in the winter. Some think it makes them invincible. Apparently not. Snow is still slippery (and white). First Law, Sorry.

Second Winter Driving rule: Plan Ahead.

So if you’re going to do things more gradually, you’ll need to plan ahead a little more than you do in dry conditions. If you want to go around that big bend in the road a little more slowly, you’ll have to anticipate it a little more and slow down before you get there.

I always like to find out exactly what my friction is. So after I pull out of my driveway, I accelerate to about 5 or 10 miles per hour (no faster please) and then hit the brakes firmly. If the road is dry, the car stops quickly; if it’s slick, the car slides. In this way I can see how slippery it is. (By the way, if there is someone else in the car with you, you might want to warn them about what you are doing. Also watch for cars behind you.)

Just as the snow is white, it WILL take you longer to get where you are going. Count on it! So plan extra. Planning for twice as long is not unreasonable. Impatient people and slippery roads are a bad combination (sort of like chocolate and horseradish).


Third Winter Driving rule: You can’t avoid what you can’t see.

The three most important winter safety devices in your car are a scraper, a brush and windshield washer fluid. I can’t see through ice, or frost, or snow or thick salt deposits. Maybe you can. It is important to keep the windows clean so you can see what you want to avoid. Side note - clean off the roof also. Also the back lights - people behind you need to see the brake lights to know you are stopping. I remember driving in high school one winter. I was in my father’s Olds wagon, and I hadn’t bothered to clean off the roof. (There was about 4 inches of snow up there.) One of the nice things about New England snow is that the day after a large storm it’s usually bright and sunny. So as the car sat in the mall parking lot, the roof heated up and the snow right next to the roof melted. On the way home, the first time I came to a stop, I heard a scraping, rumbling sound and a sheet of snow flowed down over the windshield. Four inches of wet snow is no match for windshield wipers. With the embarrassment similar to laying a motorcycle down on it’s side at a stop sign (Maybe I’ll tell you about that some day), I had to get out and clear the snow while impatient drivers behind me hit their horns.

You know, as I look back on what I’ve written, these things could apply to life in general. Life is what it is. We have some control of the path we take in life, but a lot of the things that happen are outside our control. People get sick, die, lose jobs. The first thing to getting through life’s difficult times is to understand that it is, some things I can’t change, and it is up to me to deal with it. Snow is White.

Less is More: When life gets tough, slow down. We can handle more activities and “stuff” when life is going well. But just like when it snows, when life gets tough, sometimes the only thing to do is less.

Plan Ahead: Focus on where you need to go and what you need to do. Remember, like the sunny day after the storm, life’s troubles also will pass (even though it doesn’t seem like it at the time). Those who are aiming for nothing usually get there.

You can’t avoid what you can’t see: What are some of the tools we need for life? I would mention two: good friends and a firm foundation. Just like a clear windshield is necessary to see, sometimes friends help us see things more clearly. Sometimes they are just there to help, or be with us so we know we’re not alone. Life is tough enough that we shouldn’t try to do it alone. And a firm foundation. Many of you know I’m going to seminary to become a pastor, so this next part shouldn’t be a surprise. We were made to know God, and we are most human when we turn to him and rely on him for strength. We were made for relationship with God. It just works better that way.

Winter isn’t so bad when you remember that Snow is White. It just is.