black ice

Picture it. A bridge in Connecticut, January 2004. Having left New York at 4:30 am, I settled into my Honda hoping to reach Maine before nightfall. The first couple hours were uneventful until... suddenly the wheel locked, the brakes failed and my car spun haphazardly across three lanes to face oncoming traffic. Yet somehow, we didn't suffer a scratch between us. I was lucky, and I want to encourage readers in the northeast to keep black ice in mind as you brave the roads this morning. And since this is scienceblogs, what causes the slippery stuff anyway? Black ice is ice that forms…