Last monday we here in the midwest had a pretty strong winter storm move through. It brought us around 10" of snow, plus about an inch of rain that fell as "ice" (imagine hailing for 3 hours, but the hail doesn't melt). It was a pretty awful snowstorm, the roads were terrible, and the plows couldn't keep up as they had not anticipated to get as much snowfall as we did. Add 40mph winds and it was quite the sight.
My M3 was parked all snug in the garage, and we were snug in our house. My M3 is our only vehicle, and I have Michelin X-Ice Xi3 tires on it. 225/45R18 with Rial P10 18x8 rims square setup. I have previously used blizzaks and nokkian on RWD and AWD vehicles for winter. I like the nokians over the blizzaks, as the blizzaks are super floaty/squishy/awful for dry performance and I also felt the nokians did better in snow/ice too. But this time around I went with a package from tirerack so I couldn't get nokians and the michelins got great reviews. Anyways on to the story...
So 10pm rolls around, and my wife who is 40 weeks pregnant says "we need to go NOW". Her water broke. Immediately I'm thinking holy crap. We have a RWD car, yes with winter tires, but the roads are 8-10" of unplowed snow and ice, we live in the country, so it's hills and backroads to get to the hospital. On a normal day it would take 20 minutes.
I get the car warmed up and ready and get my wife in, and off we go. The roads are horrendous. These are probably the worst roads I've ever driven on. The plows had been through earlier but stopped plowing sometime in the late afternoon. The roads were snow and ice, hard packed and heavy, with large drifts up to my windshield in some areas. My wife's mother was here for a visit so fortunately she was able to stay with our 2 other kids.
We saw only 1 other car the entire way to the hospital. We had to go up big hills, down big hills, country back roads, and through large drifts. While I know that the kind of tires you have make all the difference regardless of what you're driving, the M3 stayed pointing in the right direction the entire time. The traction control did its job and the winter tires did their job. Never once did we feel like we were going to get stuck, even when having to stop in large drifts for intersections, or go through snowplow embankments in the middle of the roads left after the plows gave up for the night. The car performed amazingly, and the tires were fantastic. I had full control at all times, traction every time I needed it, and we made it to the hospital safe and sound. And 5 hours later our 3rd child was born. Someday we'll have a story to tell her about the worst snowstorm we ever had to drive in, and that story will have an M3 in it to boot.
