Houston is one of America’s great big cities, full of amazing food and usually capable people. When the world has a problem, it’s Houston they call. The Bayou City can handle almost anything, but about three inches of snow will absolutely wreck anyone who tries to drive anywhere. That’s what happened yesterday and it was complete and utter chaos.
Growing up in the Greater Houston Area, I’ve been through a few ice storms and some extremely light snow. Houston is basically a collection of overpasses with a few homes and restaurants nestled in between, so when it gets a little slippery it rarely ends well.
I’ll share some more videos I’ve collected from friends back in Texas, but please enjoy a clip that combines the hubris of drivers and the worst outcome of one reporter’s best intentions. This was posted yesterday by Houstons NBC affiliate KPRC, and if you can’t see it below check it out at this link:
What’s happened here is that a driver, by the name of Jalell, was passing through Houston when he found himself stranded on a particularly terrible stretch of road to be on in a snowstorm. As you can see from the screenshot below, taken nearby, you’re on a sunken stretch of US-59/I-69 that usually collects flooding rains but, in this case, is trapping snow.
Having lived off this highway, it’s basically a long uphill climb until you hit one of two splits in the highway. Here’s the look heading north.
And here’s what it looks like a little further up the highway, where I think the reporter, Gage Goulding, is with his cameraman:
Again, a terrible place to get stuck, especially as the Texas Medical Center is nearby and this route is often used by ambulances to deliver people to the hospital. Perhaps that’s why, when we start our scene, the journalist is hoping to help Jaleel at least get off the highway and out of an exit.
At first, it doesn’t go well. The W221 S-Class, which appears to be a non-AMG S 550 or S 450, is rear-wheel drive and likely has an open differential (Mercedes, even on AMG products, rarely uses a mechanical LSD). The reporter has tossed some found foam under the rear and attempts to push, but to no avail. A passerby even tries to help, but can’t get it it work and eventually spins out his Toyota Corolla trying to exit.
The best part of the first part of this video is the reporter fist-bumping and apologizing “I really thought I was going to help you out, Jaleel, I’m sorry bro. I thought I was stronger than that.”
In the background some cars are trying to get around, since the S-Class is stuck where the road splits. The reporter makes the point that RWD (at least on all-seasons) is the worst configuration, and if you slow down you’re going to get stuck. Eventually, another passerby comes to help and they really throw their shoulder into it.
The Mercedes doesn’t move at all, just free-revs with no wheelspin.
“You’re not in gear, dawg,” explains Goulding, which is just the most Houston response to the situation imagineable. Eventually the Mercedes gets pushed in gear only to immediately get stuck across even more of the road.
“Oh man, now we’ve created an even worse situation,” says Goulding, explaining that the path towards the hospital is now blocked.
To the reporter’s credit, it’s a little worse than it was, but trying to help was probably the right move here in abscense of any other assistance. The best outcome was a better equipped vehicle arriving. The lifted KPRC F-Series looks like it can move out of the way, so I don’t think the hospital is truly blocked (and there are other ways to get there).
At the end of the report, Goulding explains he’s going to try and see if they can get Jaleel’s S-Class off the road and let’s just assume that’s what happened.
Elsewhere in Houston it wasn’t quite so dire.
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Here’s the Houston Police Department (HPD) out doing donuts in their police cruiser. There are two other police cars there and I’m going to assume everyone was getting in on the fun. I don’t hate it! With global climate change coming it’s about time these officers learn how to drive in the snow.
Here’s another police officer, full lights on, doing the same thing:
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Skiing on the highway? Sure.
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Keep it real, Houston. Keep it real.
I once got stuck in Little Rock Arkansas during an ice storm. Figured it would be a couple of days until I’d get a flight out so I checked into my hotel and took a walk across to the Waffle House.
While there, I realized I could not wait there for three days. I checked out of the hotel, took a shuttle to the airport and took the last rental car available to start driving back to Boston.
Roads were rough, but the biggest problem was drivers unfamiliar with how to drive int the snow.
Three times I saw a car pass a big rig, only to immediately turn back into the rig’s lane and slow down. This caused the rig to brake and jacknife. Three times I watched this happen in front of me. The exact same way each time. I saw it almost happen a few more times. In decades of driving, all of them including snow, these are the only three jacknifings I have ever witnessed.
If you don’t know how to drive in snow, don’t. Cancel your plans. Dig through your pantry and freezer for food and stay the hell home. This also goes for the news crew, because they’re not making anything safer by parking their news truck in a traffic lane and shining bright lights into traffic.
“Now this is a 911 situation.” Yes, dumbass, and you are the one who caused it! You took a car that was stuck relatively safely on the side of the road and pushed it sideways across more than one travel lane. Congratulations. When he covers a crime story does he just start shooting bystanders? Go home, Gage. Nobody needs you out there.
Many years ago, I would have been one of those people that said “You call that snow? That’s cute.” However, when Chicago gets tied up because of 12″, I know there are folks up in upstate NY who would say the same thing to us. Ditto for cold, rain, heat, etc.
While I try to be non-judgemental, I still watch these and think “Oh. No. No no no. Whatever you’re doing, do the opposite.”
I know they don’t get much snow, but zooming in to show the amazing snow accumulation of 3″ made me giggle.
As someone who grew up in Chicago and moved to the South, it is funny what you see when it snows. I remember being behind a 7er, and the driver stopped before attempting a snowy hill. Just no.
I’m from Chicago. What Houston has is referred to as a “primer coat.”
To be fair, though he lives here in Houston now Gage is from Pennsylvania. Also we always called that portion of 59 “The Canyon”. I don’t know if that’s the official name but everyone always seems to know what I’m talking about when I call it that.
Also, these past two days have been some serious nonsense! I live in the south specifically to avoid this frozen stuff.
Having recently moved to Houston, the absolute avoidance of using cardinal directions by the newsguy is wildly Houston and still novel to me. Can’t just say “Southwest of downtown” when describing the general location.
I’ve driven across England 3 or 4 times and it’s a thing there, too…but arguably worse, since even the major road signs haven’t seen a cardinal direction since Wolsey told Henry VIII that he couldn’t have Hampton Court Palace and we saw how that ended. SICKEST OF BURNS! Where was I? Oh, yeah, the whole “95 North” or “1-10 East” seems to be a mostly North American thing.
One of the things people who aren’t used to it don’t understand is that when you’re stuck on snow or ice, too much accelerator doesn’t help. Best to just turn off the traction control and see if you can basically idle up to a reasonable speed in many cases. I say turn off the traction control because I’ve been in several vehicles where TC doesn’t let you go anywhere in slippery conditions where you might want the barest amount of wheel slip.
Never use traction control in the snow is what I’ve learned. Not only will it be impossible to get started up hills on RWD cars, but often times on FWD cars it’ll make the car shudder out of control when taking a turn because it feels the wheels slipping when you use the throttle to pull it around. In either situation it thinks it’s a loss of control rather than you maximizing the miniscule moments of friction you get by spinning the tires faster.
I had a cavalier that didn’t have a button for the TC. So I used to click the ebrake up one click. Enough to trigger the car to disable TC but not enough to actually engage the cable brakes. Then you could spin just enough to dig through the snow a little and get the car moving.
Yup, no traction control is key. I was driving a RWD 320i (stick shift) through an ice storm once and with TC off it really wasn’t that hard to keep the car moving. I did better than a lot of people in more suitable vehicles.
The driver is just a terrible driver. He probably has bald tires too.
Many other cars were driving by just fine. He wasn’t stuck, he was on ice.
I understand that uphill on ice can sometimes be impossible, I’ve been there, but with so many others doing it slowly, there was definitely something wrong with this driver and this car.
Pretty sure that S-Class has traction and stability control. I’m also pretty sure it has summer tires on it.
It absolutely does have traction control. And tires that don’t have sufficient grip for the car to do anything.
Mechanical LSDs are a double-edged sword that will CUT you big time in the slipperies. They are great at keeping you from getting stuck at low speeds. At higher speeds, give the car a touch too much throttle and you spin BOTH rear wheels and lose directional stability big-time. The best solution for snow was the auto-locking diff that Volvo and others offered back in the day. 100% locked when one wheel spun at very low speeds, automagically unlocked at 20mph or so. E-diffs using the brakes work very well too, at the cost of brake wear.
I have no doubt that this S-class has an E-diff, but on no-season or summer tires there is just no grip to work with here. Best option is STAY HOME, or wherever you happen to be when God’s Dandruff starts falling in places that have no concept of how to deal with it effectively.
Here in eastern Ontario its been very cold the last few days, but almost no snow this winter. I’m not complaining, it’s great that others get to live the dream. Snow tires are the answer.
Snow tires are almost certainly the answer in Ontario, but not Houston. It very rarely falls below freezing and almost never snows. I’d bet that none of the tire stores there even stock snow tires. The closest would probably be mud tires. In Houston, not driving in this stuff is the real answer.
It would really be a waste of money to buy snow tires there, this would probably be the only day the entire year when they’d be useful
A couple years back, I moved from Colorado (Denver) to Maryland. It snows a lot less here, but that just means that even a little bit really screws things up. Luckily, I am currently able to work from home during inclement weather.
My snow tires just lived in the shed for years when I moved from New York to Delaware, eventually gave them away for free to someone being transferred to Idaho. Although occasionally useful, especially when driving into Pennsylvania, they just weren’t useful enough anymore to be worth the hassle of switching back and forth. My Crown Victoria has all terrain tires on it now that work reasonably well in snow as well as mud, but I’m not supposed to use that one for work, since it isn’t tied to my mileage program
Yeah, they’d almost definitely be dry-rotted to hell and back before they’d ever be needed again.
They’d get used for about 2 days every 3-4 years then put back in the garage. Much better to just stay home.
So less than a week’s worth of actual need over the “recommended” tire life (about 6 years). I agree that it’s just better to stay home.
That’s how it is for all snow related issues in Houston. Friends up north will make fun of us for not having snow plows or salt trucks but they’d sit in a storage lot for years at time and would wrack up more costs in maintenance than they’d save us in productivity for the 2 days we have to stay home every few years. As long as staying home on days like this is an option I don’t even bother with all-season tires, my PS4s are a lot more fun the other 363 days.
I’m with you. What a lot of people don’t get is that when you guys get snow, it is usually preceded by freezing rain and that ice is typically lurking under any accumulation.
People like to scoff, but it’s the same in Utah. Any time it snows, I get to do the “all-seasons are good enough” slalom* in my snow tire equipped daily up a long gradual hill, passing cars that just ran out of traction and momentum like the guy in the video.
*Not bragging, I have to be at work at 5:30am and the roads are usually not plowed yet and I have several significant hills to navigate.
It goes both ways, when our NYC office got shut down after a tiny Category 1 hurricane we sent them back the same jokes. It’s all what you’re prepared for and we prepare for what’s most likely to happen.
I’m in Virginia Beach, where we just got a very uncharacteristic three inches of snow and I’m contemplating if I need to go anywhere if I drive my NA Miata or my Subaru BRAT with no brakes.
This winter is freaking weird. We haven’t had an event of more than 2″ of snow this winter. And I live about two hours from the Quebec border.
Yeah, right? Good thing we’re so accurately focused on solving the problem.
https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/trump-revokes-biden-order-that-set-50-ev-target-2030-2025-01-21/
Snowy Sliding Slabs Sever Several Shins, more at 11!
If only he had swangas, too!
Wish I could edit, I had forgotten the name :)Or maybe wilfully repressed it…
Snowy Sliding Slabs Sporting Swangas Sever Several Shins In Snowstorm!
Rwd isn’t the worst, fwd reduces grip up hills when it needs more and adds grip down hills when it doesn’t.
Maybe if more car makers didn’t put 70%+ of the wieght forward. Bmw is close to 50/50 for a reason.
It is the worst when you have crappy tires
But, it can go both ways, I had a FWD Caravan as a company car in upstate New York that was totally useless in snow, vs my personal car at the time, which was a Mustang with four Blizzaks on it. Biggest issue with that one was that the snow would build up against the front air dam like a snow plow and eventually stop the car until you got out and shoveled it away
I had a Saab 9-3SC that I replaced with my current RWD BMW 328i wagon. On the very same snow tires, there was nothing in it for driving in the slipperies. The Saab was slightly better at some things, the BMW slightly better at others. And you are absolutely correct, BMW was FAR better at climbing hills. And cornering (but I like the ability to steer from both ends). The Saab was better at getting going. Basically, all the stuff where weight on the drive wheels counts, FWD with 70%+ on the nose wins. Other things, 48:52 won. But it was not an extreme difference. The Saab was probably “safer” in the hands of a brain-dead booger-head typical driver. All that weight on the nose made for better directional stability, and it’s always safer to hit things head on than sideways.
I also have an AWD Land Rover Disco on snow tires. It is GREAT in the snow – until it isn’t. Because all that extra ability to GO doesn’t mean you can STOP or TURN all that extra weight, and AWD makes it a LOT easier to write checks that your driving talent can’t cash. As evidenced by all the Subarus and Jeeps in the ditch in Maine every year. But for pulling a boat trailer out of a snow-covered field or getting over a 3′ plow berm at the end of the driveway it’s pretty great. And as a sacrificial salt anode so my BMW can sleep through Maine winters.
What should I do in the snow as a brain-dead booger-head atypical driver, though?
https://live.staticflickr.com/2844/12415574674_6724e70fc2_c.jpg
This is also what we see going up into the Sierras every winter when storms roll in. All vehicles must use tire chains except those that are all wheel drive and are equipped with snow tires. And every five or six miles, you see a pickup or a big SUV that’s spun off the road exactly because the drivers don’t understand that you still need to go slow, whether you have unconquerable all wheel drive or not. Chains pretty much preclude going too fast, this saving many drivers from themselves.
As a former Houstonian, and someone currently sitting in their office watching the snow roll in from the Colorado Rockies, all I can say is “Ha! Ha!” and I’m glad I’m not there.
I watched it from my home office window, the cars are both locked safely in the garage from this nonsense.
Good plan. That’s what I used to do on those rare days when Houston would freeze over.