Car tires blowing from snow load

Feb 02, 2011 20 Replies

We just got something like 7 feet of snow and the drifts are up to 25 feet. I was wondering what all the banging and popping sounds were until I figured out it was car tires blowing out from the weight of the snow on top of the cars. There's a large parking lot nearby and all I've been hearing are tires blowing. Some of the louder sounds have been buildings collapsing and I can see several homes and businesses gone in the piles of snow. It looks like the tire companies are going to be real busy in the next few weeks.



If your tires have not yet blown, shovel off your cars. That's if you can even get to them safely. But dont risk your life for a set of tires. Besides it could already be too late. It's likely that your car windshield and/or the roof of the car may also collapse or burst, and it may already be too late, particularly if the tires are blown.



frigidzone2@yah_00.com wrote in news:d6lik65vb7s6ggma4tmujrj3rdlosf3sna@

4ax.com:

Where are you?

My guess would be under a bridge...

When I had 12 inches of snow on my car last year, I worried that my top, which already had some small rips, would rip through and leave a big hole in the top for the snow and rain.

Didn't seem to be anywhere near ripping. Didnt' seem to have more stress on it than it has normally when raised and latched and thus stretched.

That's why I knew you were funnin' me before I got to what follows this, which I'm just reading now. The weight of the snow is a lot more than the weight of air, but it's small compared to the weight of your car or the 2 people who aren't sitting in it.

Han wrote the following:

He's in BS land.

? "George" wrote

Of course he is. Protects the car from getting a pile of snow on it.

On Wed, 02 Feb 2011 09:56:52 -0500, mm wrote Re Re: Car tires blowing from snow load:

Indeed. Snow weighs about 15 lbs/cuft. So then, 12" of snow on a car that has a footprint of 6'x12' would have 6x12x15 = 1080 lbs on it. That's about 5 fat people. That doesn't seem like tire-popping weight to me.

I think that's WHY trolls iive under bridges. If they get wet with snow or rain, they shrivel up like a snail with salt.

But the OP said he got SEVEN FEET of snow.

7x1080 =3D 7560 lbs of snow on top of the car.

That's definitely tire-popping weight.

I wonder if this guy is trying to get on mythbusters...

On Wed, 2 Feb 2011 08:39:46 -0800 (PST), snipped-for-privacy@rochester.rr.com wrote Re Re: Car tires blowing from snow load:

Oh, sorry. I missed the 7 feet part. I thought he got 12". Yes, 7' would be tire (and building structure) popping weight. But if an area has 7' of snow, I'm wondering if you can hear a tire pop through that much snow. Snow is a good sound absorbent material.

And a new urban legend is born...

Joe

YOUR FULL OF S*IT, NOW GO TO SCHOOL !

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Heavy, wet, snow weighs about 20# per cubic foot. Assuming your car is 8' wide and 16' long, one foot of heavy snow would be almost 2,600 pounds.

That would be an additional 650# per tire.

smoke another, needledick.

Actually even that weight (if it could be applied) would not pop tires.

On Wed, 02 Feb 2011 16:08:18 -0600, Steve Barker wrote Re Re: Car tires blowing from snow load:

How do you know that?

More likely to break the springs.

We had one building collapse in MN - a flat roof hardware store. A news station talked to a structural engineer. The design roof load for snow is 35 psf in Minneapolis. He said that is about 6 feet of snow. (The design load is higher further north.)

The hardware store collapse made it on the national news. Multiple building collapse plus many car tires is a much bigger news story. Anyone seen it? Was anyone hurt in the multiple collapses where the building is "gone"? Where did the OP say this happened?

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