Hello,
I have never lived in a snowy place. Where I am now we usually get enough ice to make it slick and it shuts the region down. We live in the center of the country so depending where exactly we end up we probably won’t have an entire mountain to drive over…probably.
I am moving to be either in Denver area or Minneapolis area. What do I do with our cars?
I have a small 4WD SUV (I don’t know how to drive in areas that actually require 4WD). Our other car is a slightly larger SUV. Both have pretty low clearance.
We currently have all season tires. Do we need to get special tires or chains? How do I learn to drive with the chains? Also, does everyone just have 2 sets of tires laying around?
What about vehicle fluids? IIRC viscosity is different in different climates, is that just oil I’d need to worry about?
And are you supposed to heat your car or whatever? I know they do that in super cold places but not sure about Minneapolis.
The areas we are looking at are in and around the major cities, although if we end up in Minnesota there’s a chance we will be in a more rural area or in a place where we need to drive a long distance because housing is expensive.
If anyone knows how much longer we have to get there before the roads become treacherous this winter that would be helpful. I think we have til end of September to be safe, is that usually true?
Any other tips are much welcomed and appreciated. I don’t really have anyone I can ask and the internet is pretty full of AI BS now.
I lived in the Minneapolis area for many years, so I can provide a little insight. First off, you will be fine through September. Early November is when snow that lasts for more than a day or two starts to become a real possibility.
-Tires: Your best bet, even with 4WD/AWD is to have a second set of snow tires mounted on cheap steel wheels. (4WD/AWD doesn’t do a damn thing for steering or stopping distance!!!) Swap those over around early November and back to your “regular” tires around late April. If you live in a suburban area, roads will get plowed and sanded quickly, so you are probably fine with GOOD all season tires. But if you’re considering an exurban/rural area I would certainly recommend snow tires. Studded tires and chains are not allowed on highways in MN as far as I remember, but the laws in rural areas could be different.
-Oil: Check your owners manual. At worst you may be recommended to swap from 10W-30 to 5W-30 or something, but it doesn’t get cold enough for long enough to be a strict need.
-Block heaters: With modern vehicles, it’s more of a luxury than a requirement unless you are living in the northern part of the state. If you have an attached garage, it should be a non-issue.
-Other: Always keep a bit of warm weather gear in your car. This goes triply if you live in a rural area. Imagine what you’d want if you were stranded for 4 hours at -20F. Gloves, a hat, some handwarmers, a small blanket at minimum. A small shovel and a bag of sand or kitty litter can help you out if you are mildly stuck in snow. Get the good windshield washer fluid, the stuff that’s rated to -40F. You’ll go through a ton driving on the freeway after salt has been laid down, and it is MISERABLE if it starts to freeze up on your windshield.
I’d add starter cables to the list if they don’t have it already. Cold weather can significantly weaken a car battery - and if it’s already a bit old that might be enough.
Cables and a jumper pack. A jumper pack means you don’t need someone else to help you.
Don’t get the ones that have an air compressor included, they are almost always terrible for anything other than inflating a ball. You don’t want to leave the jumper pack in the car during severe cold or heat, it will reduce performance and may cause a premature failure. Having to sit in a -20 car while you have the jumper pack in your jacket so it can warm up enough to work sucks fairly hard.
NOCO makes great jumper packs.
I will also add that getting some hard plastic “traction mats” with a jack pad can really help you or someone else out if you or they get stuck and can’t get out of the snow or have a flat tire on the highway in a snow storm.
Hey thanks for the rec! My car would probably do fine with the cheapest one, but was considering getting one rated for a larger engine in case I need to help someone out. Do you know if that would work?
Bigger is always better. You literally cannot go overboard with capacity because the jumper pack is smart enough to deliver the juice needed and not open the firehouse on a toddler.
It gives you more jumps for your own car between charges and it can help the stupid truck owner that can’t even bear the mantle of responsibility of truck ownership by being prepared, and willing, to help others.
Sweet! Thank you
Yeah it’s extra satisfying when I help out an unnecessarily large truck’s owner lol (it’s usually a man who thinks women don’t know anything - like the guy who thought I should be informed to turn my car off before swapping a belt out…my hero! 🤠)
You dont need to turn the car off, you just got to be real quick and not have a car with a clutched fan. Lol
That’s a great call, regardless of climate!
Definitely have these already! Although I might get a longer set so it’s less of a PITA.
There are batteries designed to handle cold climates. If you buy a car from a warmer climate and intend to use it in a cold climate, you really should check which kind of battery it came with. It’s probably a summer battery.
That’s a great point I hadn’t considered! I always wondered why my bog standard Elantra came with an expensive deep cycle AGM battery, Hyundai winterized them for Quebec.
AGM is exactly the kind of battery that is supposed to handle cold winters. Winter in Quebec is no joke.
Tires: Your best bet, even with 4WD/AWD is to have a second set of snow tires mounted on cheap steel wheels. (4WD/AWD doesn’t do a damn thing for steering or stopping distance!!!) Swap those over around early November and back to your “regular” tires around late April.
With that and taking the time to learn how to properly drive in snow/ice conditions you should be fine.
Thanks for the detailed response! Much appreciated. My wallet does not appreciate it though lol
No problem! If it’s any consolation, once you’re past the initial investment of a second set of tires, the costs average out over time to be about the same as using all seasons.
Just don’t drive on the winter tires too far into the spring because once it gets above 40F or so, they wear pretty quickly.
Snow tires are great, but I had to replace mine every two years. My area only has bad snow a few times year, they were fantastic for that, but the road were clear enough most of the time that I wore them down entirely too fast to justify the investment when high quality all-season tires did well enough in the poorly plowed times, combined with my driving ability, to make snow tires not worthwhile.
Absolutely a YMMV purchase and everybody in the snow belt should give them a try to know if they are right for them. Buying them with cheap dedicated wheels is absolutely a pro move; you only pay for a tire rotation instead of mount and balance and you save the risk to tire pressure sensors if your car has them.
Only thing I’d add is staying above 1/4 tank of gas is more important in Winter.
Completely drain your windshield washer fluid before winter, it WILL freeze if you use a non-winterized solution.
Wash your car (undercarriage at minimum) regularly during winter or salt will eat your car.
Oil as I understand it only really changes significantly if you’re in an EXTREME cold climate, not midwest lake-effect cold.
Oh wow. Ok, I will have to look at how to do that. (It sounds easy enough but if I’d have to pull the car apart then definitely going to have to have someone else do it)
(Just remembered the time I was going to replace my friends battery only to discover it was housed in the wheel well)
Easiest way is to probably just to blast windshield wiper spray for several minutes 😅
I had family traveling not long ago who refilled it in Oklahoma and came back home… where it was a good deal colder than what they bought in Oklahoma was rated for!!
Lol! Didn’t even think of that. Smarter not harder!
+1 to making sure your washer fluid can handle the cold and to making sure your tires handle snow/ice well. (There are definitely all-seasons that’ll do well or better than some winter tires. Unless you know that where you’re moving doesn’t plow down to pavement, I’d avoid studded tires.). Tirerack.com used to have a ton of data about tire performance on ice & snow, so you might look there, but they’ve been reducing the range of tires they carry and rate in the last few years so they may not have your tires.
Find a snow brush for your car that will let you reach & clear the snow off your car. I’ll also say I often am most disappointed by the ice scraper on a brush – meaning that’s the part that makes me regret the purchase of an individual brush.
I’ve always just refilled with low temp washer fluid if I’m running low and it’s getting close to winter. otherwise the other one does better with bugs and such in the other seasons. never had a problem with anything freezing, but I may go through it faster than others or smth
There are people in temporate states like CA that just put water in. That’s why I explicitly mentioned it.
oh I didn’t realize that lol. yeah that’d be a problem I imagine
Ah yeah I only use the special fluids lol. I probably need to top it off soon anyway so I will just make sure the new one is correct.
Thanks!
Make sure you have antifreeze, rather than pure water, in the cooling system. Pure water will crack the engine block and/or radiator when it freezes.
Try to wash your car once a week in winter to get the salt off. Might make it last longer. It will still rust out in the end though.
The advice about about antifreeze and windshield washer is on point though. I would also say that once I got winter tires, it’s been very hard to go back to all seasons in winter. Good winter tires like Bridgestone blizzack just have so much grip.
I think it’s highly depend not on how cold the climate is. Do you know the specific location? I see you’ve listed a few.
Anecdotally, I grew up in a suburban area southern Michigan where the winters could get brutally cold and there is a lot of lake effect snow. But I never needed to use an engine block heater or special tires. Read wheel drive vehicles were ill advised for winter months though from what people had told me living there. I had a small FWD crossover SUV for the bulk of my time living there and it was fine. If you have to drive in snow and icy conditions, go very very slow and bear in mind that you cannot stop, accelerate, or turn quickly at all.
The most essential think I needed was an ice scraper and remembering to warm up the car first.
Obviously ymmv depending on how cold your location is and whether or not you’re living out in a rural area. Also where I lived was likely a tad less cold than Denver. But cars were generally still able to start at -5F for reference.
Thank you! I think our other car is FWD so we may be in luck.
Unfortunately nothing is set in stone yet. We really want Denver area but our finances aren’t great so it could be somewhere else entirely.
I’m actually excited to buy a different ice scraper. The one I have is good but it’s one of those double sided made for snow removal as well and that part… isn’t great. It’s a rectangular piece of styrofoam which would be fine except there’s no way to lock it in place so it collapses when you use it.
