Tomorrow morning, we are leaving FL headed for Topeka, KS. The weather forecast calls for a driving snow storm covering much of the midwest and mid-south. What’s that, you say? Have we lost our minds? Well, maybe, but it’s Christmas, and we haven’t seen our oldest son and his family for quite a while. Sooo, we’re gonna roll the dice and take our chances. However, we’re not totally leaving ourselves in the hands of chance.
We have an app called Drive Weather that shows the weather along any chosen route, and you can vary the day and time over a seven-day period to see how the weather changes. Using this app, we have run many different scenarios along several different potential routes and have selected the one that, seemingly, gives us the best chance of avoiding heavy snow. In addition, we have put together a kit with water, snacks, and survival blankets just in case we get stranded somewhere. I also checked the antifreeze in the RAV4, and it’s good down to -15F. Weather forecasts, for Topeka, show -4F is the coldest expected, but I brought along a gallon of the proper antifreeze just in case I need to sweeten the mixture. I tried to buy some windshield washer fluid rated down to -20F, but the only thing available in the Florida stores I checked was rated +22F and +32F. I’ll check an auto parts store when we get further north.
This is all to say, even though we’re taking a big risk with the weather, we’ve done a lot to stack the odds in our favor. I suppose it would be great to have tire chains for the RAV4 but they are a bit hard to buy in Florida 🙂. However, the RAV4’s tires are only a few weeks old and are of the “All Weather” variety – plus it’s AWD.
Hopefully, we’ll get through just fine. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! We hope to be back in Florida around the first of the year. Check back to see how we made out.