All-season tires or winter tires?
Image: ddp
It snows less often. And changing wheels and tires twice a year is annoying anyway. Is it still worth it, especially since technical progress has meant that all-season tires also perform well on snowy roads?
DAs the days become darker and colder, a reflex kicks in, deeply internalized after decades of driving. This is followed by a call to the workshop you trust to make an appointment to change the wheels and tires. It’s annoying and expensive too, including storing the bikes you don’t need, which adds up to 300 or more euros every year. Nevertheless, ten years ago we would have strongly advised you to have winter tires fitted in time for Advent. A lot has changed since then, snow has become the exception in most regions of Germany. And technical progress does not stop at all-season tires.
Records from the German Weather Service show that the subjective regret over the loss of winter has an objective basis. The number of days on which residents of the German lowlands have to expect a snow cover of more than three centimeters has fallen by 65 percent between 1965 and 2021. And anyone who lives at an altitude of 300 to 700 meters can expect 50 percent fewer snow days. At even higher altitudes the decline was only 30 percent. Of course, this is not a continuous series, in the exceptional winter of 2010 it snowed more frequently than ever before in the time series, but the average over the past decade was a meager ten days for the lowlands, and the little bit of snow usually disappeared again by noon at the latest.
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