How I survived a blizzard in a Corvette Z06 on summer tires

 Yes, that was me, two weeks ago in the snowbound mess on I-75 in Kentucky.

Let me explain.

One of the most-read pieces on Autoblog last year involved taking a Corvette places it probably shouldn't have been after a blizzard in the shadow of Mt. St. Helens. As we posited in the headline for the Chevrolet Corvette Convertible Road Test Review, "Mountain road after a blizzard. What could go wrong?" I did not have that piece in mind when I recently ended up stuck on the highway. But if I had had, my review would be titled, "2001 Chevrolet Corvette Z06 Road Test Review | Frozen highway during a snowstorm. Everything went wrong (until it went right)."

It started just before New Year's, when I decided to make a quick trip to Florida to visit a friend from my home near Cincinnati. The weather the day I left wasn't merely unseasonable, it was an absurd 71 degrees. Looking at the 10-day report, forecasters didn't predict anything even approaching the unsavory for at least a few days after I'd be back. So instead of grabbing the keys to the Buick or the Land Cruiser, I grabbed the keys to the Corvette.

This was going to be a breeze.

And it was, until I got a flat tire on New Year's Day, which led to a series of unfortunate delays and poor decisions. No one will be surprised to find out that tire shops don't keep a 290/35-section Michelin Pilot Sport 4S in stock at the end of December. So instead of departing on Sunday, January 2 and being back home the following day, when temps had stabilized at a more reasonable 33 degrees with no precipitation, I didn't leave until Tuesday evening.

I drove overnight to just past Atlanta and got a hotel room. Still fatigued that evening, I decided to stay overnight and leave after a good night's sleep. This was the first of a series of missed opportunities to avoid what would happen the following day on the return trip from Florida.

On Thursday, everything was fine until after Knoxville, Tennessee, about 200 miles from home. Then the snow began, light, but sticking. By the time I crossed the Kentucky border, the landscape was white. Traffic remained fluid, moving about 45 to 50 mph. The roads were a touch slushy, but nothing problematic.

Getting into Kentucky hill country alongside the Daniel Boone National Forest past Corbin, patches of ice appeared. I saw my first car in the median. On the following curve, the back of the Corvette stepped out twice, two gentle slides that the electro-nannies quickly corrected. Then I saw the first overturned truck. 

I did not pull over. I kept going with the even slower flow of traffic. As long as traffic moved, I liked my chances.

I made it another 30 miles. Then, on an incline about two miles past the Mr. Vernon exit, traffic stopped. My chances cratered to zero.

At 2:24 p.m. on Thursday, I texted a friend to say I'd be home late. People who could turn their cars around and drive on the right shoulder against traffic back to the Mt. Vernon exit were doing so. With my car on brand-new summer tires, I didn't want to risk going downhill and sliding into any of the hundreds of cars between where I was and the exit ramp.

Southbound 75 was clear. I got out to see if there was a break in the low concrete wall separating northbound from southbound traffic that I might squeeze through. There was none.

The trucker next to me honked as I walked back to my car. Considering the situation, I was prepared for any question. His name was Mike, and he was irrationally awesome. Instead of asking me a question, he gave me an update on the situation: A huge pileup ahead, we were going to be there for at least two hours. That estimate sounded optimistic. We chatted about trucking for a bit. Then he gave me two bottles of water and a couple of granola bars, and I returned to my car.

At least I was wearing warm clothes, and I had enough warm-weather clothing in my duffel to layer up and forestall freezing to death. At 2:52 I was down to just under half a tank of gas, so I began rationing, running the car 10 minutes every hour.

An hour later, Mike told me the estimate for clearing the road ahead was another two hours.

An hour went by. Two plows had passed, clearing the left shoulder. Cars and trucks that could follow them did so, until the plows got stuck about a quarter of a mile ahead of where I was. Now there were four lanes of stopped traffic instead of three.

About 40 minutes later, Mike came over and told me it looked like we might be moving soon. The problem now was that it had been snowing an inch an hour and the mercury was dropping, so the snow under my tires had turned to ice. Mike said he had a snow shovel, and kindly let me borrow it to clear a path from where my car sat to the cleared lane. I chopped up the ice and snow and carried it out of the way until I was able to slither the Corvette into an open space in the cleared lane.