If you live in a colder part of Canada, switching to winter tires is likely a regular part of your late-fall routine. But even in more temperate areas, it’s worth making the change.

It’s clear that winter tires are designed to improve handling and safety when the pavement is coated in ice and snow, but their advantages go much further than keeping your vehicle on the road if a blizzard hits. As the mercury starts to fall, winter tires can offer huge advantages, even before the first snows or winter storms arrive, and here’s why.

Low-Temperature Efficiency

Winter tires are made from a different kind of rubber compound from regular ones. Once the temperature falls to around 7°C, a standard compound will start to stiffen up and lose its grip. Even without snow or ice, summer tires will provide less reliable handling on colder road surfaces, deteriorating further and further as the temperature drops below freezing.

In contrast, winter tires are made with a compound that starts off a little stiffer at regular temperatures, but keeps its flexibility deep down into sub-zero conditions, providing reliable grip and traction at temperatures as low as -30° or even less.

Different Tread Design

Compared to summer tires, winter designs feature deeper treads that can handle more surface snow without becoming clogged up. Also, the treads are oriented in different directions than regular ones, with zigzag angles funneling snow sideways and outward from under the wheels to provide greater traction.

Rougher Texture

Lastly, winter tires are molded with a rougher surface than regular ones, covered in countless microscopic spikes, ridges, and slits that help the rubber bite into the snowy surface. These surface features are particularly important when driving over packed snow or ice, giving a level of grip that summer tires simply can’t match.

Together, these three design differences ensure a safe amount of traction in treacherous conditions and improve handling and fuel economy in less dramatic circumstances, easing your drive through the colder months, whatever your local climate.

Comparing to All-Season Tires

If you live in an area that doesn’t often experience deep sub-zero conditions, it might be tempting to use all-season tires for the entire year, removing the need for twice-yearly switching. However, unless you live in a particularly mild climate, this will reduce your car’s efficiency and handling nearly all the time.

All-season tires are designed to work within a limited temperature range, typical of temperate climates that rarely see either snow or heat waves. In hot weather, all-season tires offer less grip, poorer handling, and higher fuel consumption than summer designs. In winter, they won’t perform much better than summer tires once they meet more than a light dusting of snow. Bearing this in mind, if you expect either high or low temperatures for more than a few weeks per year, switching between dedicated summer and winter tires is essential.

Get Your Vehicle Ready for Winter

Preparing your vehicle for winter involves more than a tire change, however important that might be. From anti-freeze checks to oil and filter changes, windshield wiper replacements to climate control inspections, a thorough pre-winter service is important for your vehicle to perform at its best. To ensure you won’t be caught out by the first harsh weather of the coming season, please book a service appointment by clicking on the button below.