Articulated Bus in Seattle slides on snow

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Tomorrow, CDTA gets to see how their 10 or so new articulated pusher buses will preform in the snow and ice.

Pusher buses are notoriously bad in the snow, they use the TRAILER rather then the TRACTOR to "push" them along the road. It's the opposite of semi-trucks that use the tractor to pull the trailer. Air pistons keep them from jackknifing when the steering wheel is going straight in normal weather, but they don't do very good in snow and ice.

Of course, they could just leave the articulated buses parked and just use the normal buses. But what fun would that be?

December 21, 2017 8 AM Update

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Good morning! Today is a nice sunny morning, but fairly cold at 23 degrees with a high one degree below freezing later. I fully expect more clouds later. 2-4 inches of snow in the morning tomorrow. But for now a nice morning. Snow is all gone locally after Tuesday’s rain and warm temperatures.

Walked down to the express bus today. Another big articulated  pusher bus, the driver gave me a ride part of the way down to the park and ride. It should be interesting to see how the pusher bus does in the snow tomorrow, although maybe they will be smart and leave the pusher buses in the garage. I think I will get up early tomorrow just so I can see how truly bad the pusher bus is on 787.

The sun will set at 4:25 pm with dusk around 4:57 pm, which is 30 seconds later than yesterday. At sunset, look for partly sunny conditions and 28 degrees. There will be a north-northwest breeze at 5 mph. Today will have 9 hours and 3 minutes of daytime, a decrease of one second over yesterday.

Tonight will have a chance of snow, mainly after 1am. Mostly cloudy, with a low of 20 degrees at 5am. One degree above normal. Maximum wind chill around 21 at 6pm; Light and variable wind. Chance of precipitation is 40%. New snow accumulation of less than one inch possible. In 2016, we had cloudy skies. It got down to 29 degrees. The record low of -8 occurred back in 1955.

Last night for the Pine Bush dinner somebody, namely me, forgot to bring the HDMI adapter so the Standing Rock people couldn’t do their power point. Today I brought it into work, I may drop it off with the person who has the projector so they have it going forward. Some think we should upgrade to a modern projector, but my view is that it’s better to keep existing things going. I know they make small cheap projectors nowadays, and indeed I’ve looked at getting one for myself for use at camp, but I think those old ones probably are higher quality and more reliable, and certainly much brighter.

It will be interesting if I can get out camping this weekend. But I’m not going to go if it’s going to be wet, and certainly not if it’s going to be snowy and icy. So far the weekend doesn’t look that nice.

There are 1 months until National Hug Day when the sun will be setting at 4:55 pm with dusk at 5:26 pm. The average high temperature is 34 degrees, with a record high of 59 in 1957.