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(Here's the original writeup.)
We had a little snow today. I knew it was coming and figured it would not be too bad. It got worse than I expected. Most of a lane of the freeway was free of snow so other than crawling along for an hour and a half of what is usually a 20 minute drive, the freeway wasn't too bad. I did ride past one guy that recently spun out in his truck.Off the freeway, the snow was a couple of inches deep. It was packed and crusty rather than glaring smooth. I merged onto the street and puttered down to the light. Stopping at the light was not a problem nor was taking off. The flatness of the tire provided stability and the snow tread provided plenty of traction.
I ran up to about 25 and actually got ahead of the traffic. My only problem was I needed to switch lanes. The snow was piled up between lanes so I found a spot where it wasn't too high and made a gradual turn into it. The pile, of course, got higher. The front wheel caught up in it and started to wobble. The back wheel held up well for a while but finally gave out. By this time I was doing about 20 and the bike went down. I stayed in the seat and the bike stayed on the engine guards until it came to a rest. Everyone stopped and a guy helped me lift the bike back up and I drove off.
Down the road, I noticed the piles were virtually non-existent in the intersections so I switched lanes there instead. (I should have known having driven in snow for 25+ years.) The last ten blocks to my house was on packed snow. I took it easy on the corners, but could speed up and slow down at a respectable pace. I lined the bike up perpendicular to the driveway before pulling in and had no problems.
I've been in snow on regular tires before. These felt better. I guess riding in snow is not the best advice or plan, but if you get stuck in some, the improved traction and floatation are nice.
A picture of the way a driveway should look:
