So I comute by bike and this week I ride through fast changing snow condition. It got from completly covered cycle route, to badly cleaned roads, to mushy brown sludge, and today there were loads of frozen bits of snow and ice patches.
I managed to fell only twice - inertia is your best friend and worse enemy at the same time. And I hope that these conditions will be over soon. Most annoying part is that I dont know what to expect and how to prepare because conditions vary from day to day.
It doesnt make sense for me, these conditions are max 10-15 days per year.
This weather is just unusual in my region early in winter. Winter here is usualy dry or too mild to get some snow let alone to have snow cover for few weeks. Last winter there were 10 cm of snow for 1 week.
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Max out your tire size. Like big fat tire style. You can sometimes get really big tires depending on your setup. Schwalbe Fat Frank 26´´ x 2.35 was the biggest I could get and they where great.
Let some air out for snow. Works especially well with packed snow and ice.
Probably not as good as studs, but works for me.
On ice it doesn’t matter much how big tires you have. I’ve got 4.8" wide ones on my efat that I ride with extremely low pressures, but on ice they’re just as grippy as the 2.5" ones on my mtb. I mean yeah bigger tires are obviously better but as is the case with cars too; on snow all tires work more or less but on ice you need studs.