Getting Wintertyres in UK

The last two years, winter here in UK had been abnormally "harsh". For several weeks, snow blankets covered large parts of the country, and much of the traffic was at a standstill or only moved slowly. So how will it be this winter? Could this be a part of the general climate change, or were these winters just freak random events, which will be compensated by this years record-warm winter?

The press had made wild predictions about another snowy winter, but they have really no clue - weather cannot be predicted for a longer period than 3 days, and in recent weeks I have even got my doubts about the ability of weather forecasters for this short period. Nobody knows. But this year, I am actually less worried. Why? This year I got winter tyres on my car.

These past winters I just had the same summer tyres on my vehicle for the whole year. And yes, the car did slide all over the place on those un-cleaned side roads with their snow-covered ice. Nobody here in the UK drives with winter tyres: there is usually no necessity to put on winter tyres for those two days of some wet snow drizzle. But the last two winters have shown that winter in UK can also be different. When I lived in Germany, we did have lots of snow in winter, and I always had put on winter tyres because they really provided better traction, cornering, and stopping. Now since recently, it is actually compulsory in Germany to put on winter tyres. These tyres in general really work already better in any condition from below 7 deg C, so this should be fine on many days in the UK winter too.

Since October, there has been some awareness campaign by tyre retailers to convince customers to buy winter tyres. The only problem is: there are almost no winter tyres available anywhere. I did check the major tyrer retailers, and they do have either no winter tyres at all, of maybe one single noname brand of which I never have heard from before. Even doing an online search did show that most tyre dealers did not sell any winter tyres. But then I found one online retailer: www.mytyres.co.uk. They have all possible tyre manufacturers, from cheap tyres at around £ 40 up to £ 90 per tyre. In my opinion, the tyres from Dunlop, Goodyear, Continental, Michelin are the best (as tested by the ADAC). But for myself, I opted for a lower-cost tyre, which including fitting cost £ 60 per tyre: Debica Frigo 2 (made in Poland). Should be good enough for my cheap vehicle. The test results on TyreTest (actually submitted by owners of the tyres) appear to be much more lenient than the ones by the ADAC, but at least the Debica did fare better than some of the other low-cost tyres.

Quite interesting, how the URL of the Tyretest page has the German word "pkw_winterreifen" in it... and the German connection goes even further: Turns out that the company mytyres.co.uk is part of the German company Delticom AG. The tyres, after I ordered them online, would have been sent to my home in Leeds directly from their supply depot in Germany! But instead I chose them to be delivered to one of their recommended fitters here in Leeds. Shipping is for free, and the fitting added about £ 15 per tyre for fitting, so the total price including the fitting came to £ 60 per tyre. Yesterday on Saturday, I did the fitting, and now I am ready for any snow storm here in Leeds! The weather report for Monday already predicts some chance of snow flurries - I am prepared, and I am looking forward to the strongest longest winter ever!

"Worst" Snow in 18 Years - UK is in Crisis

A nice snowfall started on Sunday evening, with big flakes falling down. Today in the morning, the streets were covered with a few cm of snow. And as it happened in December, also this time the traffic broke down.
One of the reasons is of course that there is very rarely true snowfall here in the UK - winters are usually mild, and the temperature rarely falls below 0 C. But when it does, and when then a few snowflakes fall down, the country cannot cope with it because it is not as prepared as for example Canada, or the Northern US. There are too few "critters" (these are the vehicles which spay sand and salt). So many of the side roads remain snowy.
Also, nobody here ever puts winter tires onto their vehicles; I am not sure if they even exist here. So I experienced today when driving, what it means to drive uphill on a road full of snow sleet just with regular summer tires, and to feel the sliding to the side etc.
Snow kept intermittently falling today, sometimes just a bit of flurry, sometimes thick heavy flakes.
The weather report says we will get more snow through the night.

Winter in Leeds

These past 2 weeks we did not have any rain here in Leeds - instead it got colder and colder, due to an Polar air stream. Freezing temperatures at night, below 0 C, then some fog in the morning. This created very nice picturesque conditions, with trees covered in frost. Later in the day the sky became blue - a very nice sight!
Unfortunately I did not have much time for taking pictures, just a few while being on the way between meetings...

Winter in the Pennines

On Friday morning, when I woke up, I saw snow flakes falling down! The last time here in Leeds I had seen those in the early days of December, when I was at the Christkindl Market on the Millenium Square. I had missed the snowfall that occured after Christmas - since I was out on travel in the US.

Saturday morning, the weather looked bright and sunny, and I decided to drive up to the Pennines, the mountain range which separates the East of Northern England from the West, to catch the last snow for this season. Driving through Huddersfield, signs indicated that the road which I intended, would be closed. However, I decided to continue anyway, just in case the sign was not correct. A second sign with the same warning - I prepared for a detour. But after I drove through Holmfirth up the slope of A6024, no road barrier blocked access. Cars came down this road, with snow on them.

On the highest point of the road, Holm Moss, I stopped to get out and take a few pictures. An icy wind from North-East almost blew me away. On the Pennines high mountains (well, high is quite relative - the peaks are about 600 m), it is always very windy. I had been here already several times during autumn, and it always seemed like the "end of the world", a moon landscape without trees, very thinly populated, large moors covered in heather. The fast moving clouds always seem to touch the peak - so when being on top, it gets quite foggy.

I continued towards south, to visit a Model Railroad Exhibition in Chapel-en-le-Frith. Coming from north, the most impressive structure is a combination of two large railroad viaducts, merging into a Y. From there I headed further East on small country roads. Narrow path, only wide enough for one vehicle; I kept driving uphill, hoping that nobody would come driving down towards me - there was no room for passing a car.

On my map I saw a marking of Mam Tor, and I was wondering what that could be. When I arrived at the parking lot, several people - all very warmly dressed, almost with mountain climbing gear - walked uphill towards the close peak. I joined them, walking through the slippery slope of wet snow. This hill turned out to be an ancient fortress, at least 3000 years old. A gorgeous view from the top - but the wind was so strong, I could lean against it and not fall. The cloud level had become denser, removing the blue sky sunny spells from the morning.

I continued to Bamford and made a turn back north to the Snake Pass. When climbing up with the car on the road, the sun came out and shined onto the white snowy plain on top. Several cars parked there, people took a stroll in the blindingly white environment - a gorgeous feeling, if it would not have been sooo cold! Again the wind made the difference - and after taking a few pictures I returned into the car to drive back to Leeds.

View from Mam Tor in the High Peak District towards north into the Edale valley. Note the border of snow level. 

Winterly scenery in the Peak District of the Pennines.