They have to store them and then be able to find and access them as needed. How many people know how to put chains in their tires?

Showtalk said:

How many people know how to put chains in their tires?

In Canada and Alaska, probably most people with a drivers' license. Same for North Dakota, Montana, Idaho, Minnesota, northern Michigan and Wisconsin.

Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, most of Texas, Oklahoma, Missouri, lower elevations of New Mexico, Arizona, southern California, lower elevations of Colorado, most of Kansas, Tennessee, Kentucky, the Carolinas, lower elevations of West Virginia and Virginia, nope.

Florida definitely would NOT know how to put on chains... 

It only snows once every 60 years or so and even then, it never piles up. It usually melts before it hits the ground or in under 5 minutes after it hits the ground. So, you don't need chains or even snow tires for that matter.

Regular tires will do just fine. 

As for ice on the roads... perhaps up in the northern panhandle, but not in central or south Florida.

FWIW

Southern California has snow. Big Bear lake and similar regions.

I knew some people from South Florida, who didn't even know tire chains were a real thing, until we went up to Ruidoso, NM on Memorial Day weekend (about 23 years ago), and I talked them into going up the mountain. We started running into light snow that melted as it touched the ground at about the 8,900 foot elevation and by the time we reached the parking area for the ski resort at 9,600 feet, it looked practically like a blizzard.

Within about 2 hours the weather system blew through, and the sun came out. The snow visible on nearby Buck Mountain, which mostly contains a forest of radio antennae, melted quickly, and Sierra Blanca was also soon a late spring meadow, with snow only in the north facing folds and crevices that would not see direct sunlight until near the summer solstice itself only 3 weeks away.

So to further those two tropical city folk's education about climate, geography, and meteorology, I somehow convinced them to hike up the now dry Deep Freeze ski trail up to the lookout at 11,600 feet MSL. It was kind of amusing to see how they struggled with the thin air, especially since they were teenagers and I was already well into my 40s, so I had to frequently pause as they stopped and panted. It took about 90 minutes to ascend the roughly 2000 extra feet, and the one that had tried to play the more tough person role was the one whining the most.

The climb was worth it though, as once you reach the lookout, you can see the whole White Sands missile range sprawling out to the horizon, plus with the handheld radio I brought along, could key up repeaters in a long line from El Paso through Socorro, all the way up to Albuquerque, to the south and west, and with my Arrow handheld dual band yagi antenna was able to key up and communicate through the Notrees, TX repeater on the lip of the caprock almost 200 miles away, to tell people in Odessa and Midland that we were at the mountain lookout. 

The actual summit is 1/2 mile further to the south with a very deep chasm separating it from the lookout area, that requires serious technical climbing skills and equipment to descend then ascend the other side, to get an extra 403 feet of height, at 12,003 feet.

The Roswell repeater at the time on 146.88 mhz, was quite easy to reach even with the transmit power all the way down to 500 milliwatts, and cranked up to maximum with the beam, I managed to briefly get another repeater on I-40 east of Albuquerque to ID but couldn't get intelligibly enough into it to complete a radio contact.

I did, however, make a good solid contact with someone near the state line town of Broncho, and had no trouble at all reaching Hobbs and of course Tatum, from where you can actually see the mountain peak visually across the desert floor from about 140 miles away.

It was also possible to hit Mt Livermore, which also got into the West Texas Connection system, so in a few minutes the whole ham radio community knew I had climbed the mountain. I wish I'd had sufficiently portable HF equipment that day, as often there are a lot of people who want to log contacts all over the world from mountain summits.

I had hoped to work a low pass of UO-14 that day but the whiny person's delays meant by the time we reached a point where the portion of the sky it would pass through was above the horizon, it had already come and gone, its ground track somewhere near the Arizona - California state line.

Anyway, as we started down, it was warm and sunny but within a few minutes, clouds blew over and the temperature again dropped very fast, and we got to experience first a cold rain that quickly turned to sleet, then a snow flurry that was nearly a whiteout.

Familiar with the mountain, I told them to keep moving, as it's all downhill, and do NOT step off of the marked trail. It was a mostly controlled adventure, but neither of them had ever in their lives seen weather go from warm and sunny summer-like and actually hot and sweaty to very winter-like in a matter of minutes, or the reverse.

We went the first 6 of the 24 miles back to town in an actual ice fog, then again at about the 8,400 foot elevation, broke out of the cloud deck and into clear air. In Alto and then Ruidoso itself, there had been no precipitation at all as the roads were dry, and it had remained sunny the whole time.

I say we were relatively safe, as it's a very easily accessible mountain, there were dozens of people who knew exactly where we were to within a few hundred feet. We weren't, say, halfway between Everest base camp and camp 2 climbing an icefall.

Although of course the reckless occasionally do come out on the losing end of encounters with Mother Nature, the trail we took is really more or less like an actual road. WIth a turbocharged 4x4 you can drive up to within about a hundred feet of the summit, and in winter they have SnoCats that go up and down it to pack and groom the trail every night, and there's snowmaking machines set at the edges of the ski trails that you can easily use as landmarks to navigate up or down even in full IMC (Instrument Meteorological Conditions).

In the higher elevations. They don't get snow on the beach, I'm sure, or it would be accompanied by apocalyptic headlines of 40 years of darkness, fire and brimstone falling from the skies, rivers and seas boiling, earthquakes, volcanoes, human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together.

They did this year. It wasn’t heavy and only asked one day, but there was snow along the coastline.

LOL...

The higher up you are on a mountain, the further your radio signal will reach. 

As for the South Florida guys... (* CHUCKLE *) I could imagine that.

I was born and raised in Central Florida but never saw snow until I was 20 years old in Japan.

Highest mountain I had ever climbed was Mt. Mitchel's peak 'Clingman's Dome' in North Carolina, but that was in the summer. It was the highest peak on the East Coast though. But the air wasn't thin enough to affect anybody.

Mt. Fuji does, however, have that effect on many. They all want to reach the top, but 3/4ths of the way up, many experience breathing problems and have to turn and go back down never making it to the tip.

FWIW

Toyota study shows electric vehicles may be unnecessary to lower CO2 emissions

June 8, 2023
By Thomas Lifson

WALTER784 said:

Mt. Fuji does, however, have that effect on many. They all want to reach the top, but 3/4ths of the way up, many experience breathing problems and have to turn and go back down never making it to the tip.

FOr some reason I think Mt Fuji is high enough to give some of the mountains in Colorado a run for their money (not gonna google this late)