Which tires work best in Deep Snow?

If you only upgrade one thing on your vehicle for off-road performance it should be tires. This is especially true if you plan to drive in deep snow. Lifts, bumpers, lightbars, and armor are all be secondary to the rubber that you put on your wheels. Most stock tires are designed to be cheap for auto manufactures, fuel efficient, and quiet for test drives. These traits will not help you when you are 10 miles into the backcountry and knee deep in snow. Selecting the right tire for your driving conditions is critical to minimizing stopping distance, maintaining traction, and preventing flats in rough terrain.

Unfortunately there is no such thing as a do it all snow tire. Some tire categories are better at certain winter driving scenarios than others, so you will want to make a selection based on the conditions that you will encounter the most. Here’s our rundown on the three categories of tires you should be looking at depending on the style of winter driving that you plan to do.

Studless Snow Tires

This is a very special category of tire that is designed specifically for use only during the winter months. These tires come with a softer rubber compound that allows them to perform much better than your stock all seasons on packed snow and black ice. This is going to be your best choice if you have to commute in a place that routinely experiences harsh winter weather, or visit your local ski resort every weekend. The downside to studless snow tires is that they will not perform as well off-road or in deeper snow, and they require that you own a separate set of summer tires for the warmer months. The softer rubber compound also results in a lower tread life when used on bare gravel or rocky surfaces.

Mud Terrain Tires

Off-roaders who are into serious snowwheeling in deep powder will often opt for extremely large mud terrain (MT) tires with diameters over 37”. These oversized tires with big lugs can be aired down significantly (more on that later) to spread out the pressure that the vehicle places on the ground. This flotation effect, as we call it, helps to keep their rigs on top of the snow rather than bogging down. The downside of large MT’s is that while they can perform very well in deep snow they also tend to be terrible (if not dangerous) on slick paved roads. For that reason alone we really can’t recommend MT’s to novice snowheelers.

Snow Rated All Terrain Tires

Snow rated All Terrains (AT) offer some of the flotation and large lug benefits of the MT category, while utilizing a softer rubber compound and more road oriented tread pattern to gain some of the benefits of studless snow tires. Unlike studless snow tires, most snow rated AT’s can be kept on your vehicle all year long, which is ideal for drivers who do not have space to store a 2nd set of tires. They also perform better in mixed conditions, which is prefered if you live in a warmer place but routinely drive into winter, or if you put in a lot of miles on bare off-road surfaces like gravel or mud.

After evaluating our driving needs we decided to go with snow rated AT’s for both our Toyota 4Runner and Toyota Tundra. Winters where we live in Central Oregon result in a wide range of conditions. Sometimes we get packed snow and ice on our streets so we do need tires that perform adequately under those conditions, but through most of the season the roads are clear so we don’t really need studless snow tires. On top of that with the Deschutes National Forest surrounding our town on three sides we put in a substantial number of miles on gravel roads that would not be kind to studless snow tires. All of those factors came together to make snow rated AT’s our obvious choice.

But what about Studs?

For decades the common snow driving wisdom was that studs were the pinnacle in winter traction technology. While that may have been true at one point, today studless snow tires technology has advanced to the point where studs are only superior in a very limited set of circumstances, specifically sheet ice that is close to 32 degrees. Studless technology performs better in virtually all other conditions, critically including wet roads and dry pavement. Studs also have the problematic side-effect of ripping up our public streets and making conditions worse for other drivers.

Want to learn more about driving in Deep snow?

Checkout our full article on how to drive off-road in deep snow. In it we cover vehicle selection, driving techniques and other key considerations before venturing into deep powder.