Behind the scenes: Consumer Reports snow-traction tire testing in Vermont

While the mid-Alantic area got hammered with snow this year, Connecticut saw little snow fall in January and early February. Keeping the tire test program on schedule meant a trip north to Jay Peak to do our annual snow-traction testing.  Jay always has great snow conditions, no matter what's happening around the rest of the country. This year was no exception, with the snow on our test course and the surrounding ski area at near perfection.  Temperatures hovered around the mid-teens at night when we did our testing, providing a nicely textured snow condition just right for tire snow traction testing.
 
This year we are testing ultra-high performance all-season, summer tires, and suitable winter tire replacements.  The summer tires are not intended for snow and for that matter do not grip well in cold temperatures. We don't even bother testing them for winter performance.  They have no snow traction claim and based on our experience, you should just leave your car parked whenever the snow falls if it has summer tires on it.
All-season tires compromise some of the summer tires' tenacious dry and wet grip by claiming to have some grip on snow and ice.  But based our testing, don't expect miracles from these tires. Most of the all-season tires tested deliver some grip to get around on snow-packed roads, but expect to feather the throttle to gain grip, drive cautiously around curves, and give yourself plenty of time and distance to stop. In short, all-season UHP tires are good choices where winter storms are mild or if you don't need to be out before the snow plow clears the roads.  For those drivers who don't want to fuss around with the limitations of UHP all-season tires or have to be out on the road despite the snowy weather, then winter tires are the best choice.

We test the tire's snow traction by accelerating from 5 to 20 mph. Some of the winter tires took just half the distance of many of the all-season tire models to get up to 20 mph.  Equally impressive, the winter tires stopped and cornered much better than the all-season models when circling around to re-enter the snow test course to take another run.    

See our test results in November of the winter, all-season, and summer tire models that we will be testing. We will follow-up with up-dates through the year on how these tires pan-out. 

— Gene Petersen