Any issues running winter tires year round?

Both of my kids will be attending UNR in Reno next year. They don't get a lot of snow but the roads get icy. They will also be traveling up to Tahoe occasionally on the weekends and the roads up there can be pretty treacherous. Neither one will be putting a lot of miles on their cars, maybe 5k per year. I'd like to prepare their cars for the worst conditions they might encounter. Is there any reason they can't run winter tires year round? It looks like the most affordable options for their cars on Tire Rack would be the FIRESTONE WINTERFORCE 2 or VREDESTEIN WINTRAC PRO.

FWIW: when I lived in Colorado 30 years ago I had a small FWD car with cheap mud and snow tires on it. It was a great combination.

Accelerated wear, sub-optimal grip, but that's all for a DD. I've done it on the family beater van.

Softer compound in winters, faster wear.

I always thought that was the reason for the Michelin Cross Climate 2's

They dissolve, and if they don't dissolve, it is because they have heat-cycled so much that the rubber is now somewhere between conveyor belt and hockey puck, and no longer any good as a winter tire.

When Altimaxes were cheap and good, and I had a car with 14" wheels, I used to just buy a new set every October.  It's a valid way to operate but at the time a set of tires was $250.

You CAN drive winter tires year-round without horrible results (and I have), but why not try a set of the newer "severe snow service" all-seasons instead, like the Goodyear Assurance Weather-Ready or the Michelin Cross-Climates dclafleur mentions.  The hardcore winter tires like the X-Ice don't list a UTQG rating but the severe snow-service all-seasons do.

(goes to tirerack.com)  Looks like General, Pirelli, Toyo, and Kumho make severe snow service all-seasons too.  Guess that's what I'll be buying for my wife's car this fall.  She's good at many things but winter driving isn't one of them.

I'm curious about this, too, for low-mile vehicles like the truck. The thing about the severe snow service all-seasons, as I understand it, is that they've got improved ability to deal with snow compared to normal all-seaons, but don't address ice, which is the OP's concern and mine as well.

Last time I was looking at truck tires, I saw the Toyo Celcius Cargo was an all-season with the severe service rating, but Toyo specifically called out that they addressed ice capability. Sounds like the Celcius claims the same thing in a passenger tire?

From Tire Rack's page on the "Three Peak Mountain Snowflake" logo:

Testing measures a tire's acceleration traction on medium-packed snow only. Braking and turning on snow, along with ice traction are not components of the test.

I assume someone besides Toyo is trying for some level of ice capability as well, that's just the one I've stumbled into. And of course with no tests, we have Toyo's word for whether the Celcius is meaningfully better on ice than a "three-peak-all-season" tire... At least on Tire Rack's site, the Cross-Climate 2 doesn't claim anything beyond that rating, and doesn't mention ice.

bluebarchetta said:

You CAN drive winter tires year-round without horrible results (and I have), but why not try a set of the newer "severe snow service" all-seasons instead, like the Goodyear Assurance Weather-Ready or the Michelin Cross-Climates dclafleur mentions.  The hardcore winter tires like the X-Ice don't list a UTQG rating but the severe snow-service all-seasons do.

(goes to tirerack.com)  Looks like General, Pirelli, Toyo, and Kumho make severe snow service all-seasons too.  Guess that's what I'll be buying for my wife's car this fall.  She's good at many things but winter driving isn't one of them.

Yep I've got a set of these for the Toyobaru's winter/storage/emergency spare tires, Kumho Solus HA31s.

My roommates and I all drive in Tahoe on the Winterforce II. Good enough I only use 4wd in extreme circumstances. It is a great tire. Due to a logistics screw up I drove mine back across the country this spring, 3000 miles. I only wish I hadn't taken 3000 miles of life off of them, as I find them only good for a few winters. A full summer of sun won't be good for them.

Alright, we already have 3 Peaks rated VREDESTEIN QUATRAC PROs on my son's Mazda 3. It sounds like that's going to be about as good as we can find for a year round tire.

The tires on my daughter's Tiguan are 235/50R18s. It looks like the cheapest sets of 3 Peaks tires are the FIRESTONE WEATHERGRIP, GENERAL ALTIMAX 365 AW or VREDESTEIN QUATRAC PRO. Unfortunately they are all around $180-200 each.

We have the GOODYEAR ASSURANCE WEATHERREADY on our Explorer. I've never had problems with them but we only drive in the snow once or twice a year. 

Both of our daughters in Colorado Springs are running General Altimax year round and they are doing fine.  They are certainly better than the all-season tires they had before in the winter (really six months here), and the summer performance isn't horrible. My Fiesta still has Blizzaks, but those will be coming off this weekend.  They are just a little too squirmy going around exit ramps and show a marked increase in traction control engagement.

I wouldn't stress about snows when it doesn't snow.  They'll wear pretty fast, be noisier, and not have quite the grip in dry/wet, so they'll be modestly less safe in non-snow conditions, but only very modestly in DD situations.  I never noticed my snow tires suddenly becoming dangerous in dry, warm conditions, although I can't remember any specific times when I needed them to excel like a panic stop or a steering maneuver.

It's always a trade-off.  Do you put them in snow tires which will be 10% less optimal for 90% of the time, or do you put them in A/S which will be 40% less optimal 5% of the time.  Do you prepare them for the two weekends they go to Tahoe at the expense of the 80% of the time when A/S would be a better choice, or do you arm them for the two weekends where they might need winter tires at the expense of 80% of the time when they don't need it.  I think it's a wash.

I would probably put my kids (if I had any) in the top-rated snow/ice version of an A/S.  If they can't make it, they probably shouldn't be going anyway.  It's not like snow tires are a miracle, they're just the next step in one direction of tire performance.

I spent much of my college life in PA not even being able to get in my driveway about twice a year because I had Pirelli Summer-only 285mm tires on a RWD V8 car.  I made it though.... but that was 20 years ago when it actually snowed in PA.  To me, it wasn't worth swapping tires for those two days.

We're in the mountains in Colorado but we leave my girlfriend's snow tires on her Cherokee year round. The cost of paying to have them swapped twice a year is much more than buying tires more frequently. But she also only does 7-8k miles a year. In places like this with a decent amount of snow, snow tires really are much better than anything else. I commuted in a Prius for a while and it did great with snows. Not so much with all seasons. 

I've left the Blizzak's on the Crosstrek all year for a couple years now, still have great tread and nothing terrible I've noticed, but it's an appliance.

people claim they'll wear faster. i've yet to see it

In reply to camopaint0707 :

Bring a car to an autox when it's 80. They chunk up and shred themselves in about 5 runs. 

Bridgestone Weatherpeak currently has $110 instant rebate at Tire rack and Discount Tire( might be at other places as well). Unfortunately mine were just recently installed so I can't comment on winter performance. Tire tech came out to talk to me about installing "snow tires" in the spring. He did not realize they are 4 season rated with a 65k tread warranty. Time will tell but I am optimistic.

4 seasons tires are lousy in the snow.  Worse on ice.  But they do hold air so they are tires.  

Jerry said:

I've left the Blizzak's on the Crosstrek all year for a couple years now, still have great tread and nothing terrible I've noticed, but it's an appliance.

Blizzacks get hard if used above the 45 degrees  they are meant for. 
    

Curtis73 (Forum Supporter) said:

I would probably put my kids (if I had any) in the top-rated snow/ice version of an A/S.  If they can't make it, they probably shouldn't be going anyway.  It's not like snow tires are a miracle, they're just the next step in one direction of tire performance.

This was my thinking when we sent the boy off to college. I put the Quatrac Pros on his car right before he left. They are much better than the tires that came on the car. Unfortunately he hit a patch of ice about a mile from the school and slid into a curb. I've been trying to teach both kids to slow the berk down when the roads might be questionable. He learned that lesson the hard way. I honestly think he's more careful when the conditions are bad, but got overconfident because the road was dry up until that corner. 

Ime snow tires offer unexpectedly low grip in dry conditions. I had to drive much slower than would be expected compared to even crappy all season tires. This was on Blizzaks on my  e36 back in the day. 
 

They also wear much faster in dry warm roads. 
 

Defintely don't recommend running them all year around especially if you're driving on mountain roads in the off season where you need a standard level of grip 

I drive 100 miles a day.  I've had winter tires on my 2019 Fusion for 2 years now. 

In reply to amg_rx7 (Forum Supporter) :

Spending the winter in Truckee, CA,  you go from a week of 50+° temps and dry roads to a week of 20° temps with snow. I've never felt like it was any less safe or handled any worse in the warm/dry weather. Admittedly I'm in a Cherokee, not an E36, but if somebody isn't a performance driver, I doubt they'd notice.

I ran Altimaxes year round for 2+ years on a DD. Didn't seem to wear especially quickly, a little less grippy than all seasons but not terrible. Good in rain. I'd do it again. I think it may depend a lot on the vehicle (is it neutral handling? Is it super nose heavy? FWD, RWD, AWD?) and the exact kind of winter tire. 
Older Blizzaks (Ws-50?)  were very squirrely on my E28 in the dry... an emergency highway speed lane change or something could get things dangerously loose. 

What I'm hearing is that it *probably* would be OK, but that isn't assured. If it were my car I'd give it a shot. Since it's the kids' cars I'll probably go with the AW tires. 

Thanks for all of your input.