It was about 50 degrees once I was in the central Sacramento Valley where Sacramento is. It was mostly sunny until I got to about I think Williams or Woodland or Sacramento around there. Then it looked exactly like it was going to snow but it was too warm for that at around 50 degrees Fahrenheit to about 46 degrees Fahrenheit around Red Bluff And Redding. Then as we headed up past Shasta Lake and Dam the temperature started to drop pretty fast because it started to get dark and I started to worry about black ice as the temperature dropped first to 38 and then finally to 34 as I drove into the little City of Mt. Shasta. There was still snow as low as Lakehead a little and Dunsmuir and Mt. Shasta city are covered in the stuff. I asked my friend if it was going to go below freezing tonight and he said, "Of course" so I blew out all my windshield washer fluid because I knew it wasn't the type to go below 32 degrees (freezing) Fahrenheit without freezing and ruining my pumping mechanism for the windshield wiper fluid or breaking the plastic pipes it goes through. Tomorrow I'll go buy some that goes down to Zero degrees or 32 degrees below freezing Fahrenheit.
When I turned into my hotel there were piles of snow 5 to 10 feet high. Then when I took a short cut over past the post office I realized when i stopped at a stop sign I couldn't move forward past the post office there and had to go into 4 wheel drive just to get up from the post office to the main highway through town over to a restaurant I was going to meet my friends at. It was so slippery I decided to just stay in 4 wheel drive because it is so treacherous around town right now. When I came back that way it was a problem because I didn't stop soon enough and slid out onto Lake blvd. a little. luckily there was no one there so it wasn't a problem. Luckily, I appear to have time to readjust to driving on ice and snow once again through town. It's much better to get adjusted in town with not much traffic at night than in the day or up in the mountains where you can really get stuck and into trouble really easily because there are always one or more people who totally don't know how to drive on ice or snow that ruin it for everyone else by getting stuck and blocking roads with their cars or vehicles and then people run into them because they can't stop and this just goes on and on sometimes to the point where you just have to either laugh or cry or both as long as no one gets injured in the process.
So, hopefully I already learned my lesson by just trying to drive around town. My friend at the restaurant said, "I wouldn't drive anywhere around Mt. Shasta city right not without either all wheel drive or 4 wheel drive. It's just too dangerous to do otherwise!"
So, there are a bunch of people up here for the 3 day holiday which I didn't check to see that was coming this weekend and Monday. So, with all the snow people here I'm going to have to be doubly careful driving everywhere because many might not know how to safely drive in this stuff being from San Francisco or other southern California places, for example. (I grew up in Los Angeles mostly so I understand this). I didn't get really good at driving on snow and ice until I was in my 20s actually after seeing many many accidents where people crashed their cars into trees and rocks and other cars and trucks because they weren't thinking what the road conditions actually were and hadn't trained for driving on snow or ice. The worst was the first day of icy roads in Santa Fe, New Mexico. When I was at a private school there my senior year in High school my friend told me to go watch people crash in 1965 in the first snow and ice in downtown Santa Fe, New Mexico. I watched car after car come down the hill towards the park and crash into rocks, Trees or cars while sitting watching from a park bench in about 20 degrees outside. But, I was only 17 then and pretty impervious to the cold and and ice and snow because I was young and very co-ordinated and didn't get cold as easy as I do now at 71. I think I might have learned more that day what not to do while driving a car on ice or snow than any other single day of my life!
Most important thing if you have never driven on snow or ice: YOUR BRAKES WON"T WORK!!!
OR at least they won't work the way they usually do. And if you freeze up your brakes (leave them on full blast where your wheels lock) you likely will be going sideways or spin all the way around soon which can be pretty dangerous or fatal.
The second thing you have to be aware of is if you are going too fast around a corner you will slide right off the road on snow or ice into a snow bank or off a cliff or whatever is there from centrifugal force while turning.
So, experiment if you haven't done this before so you don't kill yourself or other passengers or other people in other cars from inexperience.
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