I went through a freak snow storm in a manual corolla that had no traction control and I only had about a month experience driving stick. I became less confident as I went through it to the point where I was almost certain I would get stuck or get into an accident.
I was heading back to my house with my girlfriend and her fat retard friend 6 hours away and stopped at the last gas station before I-20. Its started snowing hard which was completely unexpected. Since this is the Southeastern United States, vehicles do not have snow tires and sand trucks/plows are either nonexistent or take hours to ready. This isn't an issue since the typical response to a freak snow storm is to stay inside until the next day when the sun inevitably melts it. Not wanting to be delayed and thinking it was going to cease in 30 minutes and become slush, I decided to continue. This would be a terrible mistake. The snow was powdery and would blow across the road. I had never seen it snow with the ground dry. This was fairly good since the snow would blow across the road and accumulate in the grass. A pickup truck speeds past me and several seconds later he spun out in front of me and proceeded to slide into the shoulder. Over time there was slush accumulation and my backend would try to get away from me but, as its a cheap front wheel drive car, the back end would straighten out a second later. Others weren't so fortunate. I started passing snow covered vehicles, suggesting they were there for quite some time.
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The roads kept getting worse but they weren't iced. In the South the most dangerous part isn't when it snows, it's when the slush freezes at night to form black ice. This ice doesn't last very long given the South's sunshine and aversion to cold temperatures. As long I got out of this before dark, I would be fine. Then I hit a traffic jam. It was moving slowly so that was a good sign. Vehicles next to me and tailgating me made me very uneasy. We go through a small pile up with people standing by their vehicles.
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Night was falling and I was losing confidence. There is almost nothing on this stretch for at least an hour. No gas stations, no hotels., just small towns away from the highway. I couldn't really go back and idling my car through the night wasn't an option. I continued on but now there were more vehicles near me and some where making mistakes. It was mostly crossover vehicle drivers slowly pushing faster until they started losing control. It was becoming harder keeping control. Black ice was forming. In a straight line this would be bad but not the end except there was a bend coming. There was a bend under a bridge and there were cars barely moving ahead. I slow to a crawl and see there are vehicles in the median. You don't think about highway curves being banked until you see cars sliding down into the median. Everything was eerily quiet interrupted by the sound of wheels frantically trying to gain traction before hearing the sound of vehicles banging together. I was in the right lane at the top of the bank and decided to put half of my car on the shoulder. While other cars were sliding down and piling up, I was slowly moving forward. There was one problem, the semis gave up and parked on the shoulder, blocking my path. I had to get back on the road and hope I wouldn't slide down into the mess of cars. I turned my car back to the road and was met with spinning wheels.... well the driver side wheel. The ice on the road and the shoulder reduced the traction so much that my car was not getting back on the road and I was running out of room. Several feet before I met with the semi's trailer, my car hopped back on the road and didn't slide. I made it past the bank and on a straight away. No one said a word the entire time. As I proceeded forward, I noticed the lack of lights around me. Only me and another car made it through. I have no pictures of this as my girlfriend was too occupied with being scared. As I went very slowly the other guy kept becoming impatient, speeding up, and losing control. I eventually left him far behind. I reached a bridge and as I went under it, the road material changed and the ice and water disappeared on the road as if it never occurred.
I made a terrible judgement call and, by the time I realized that, I couldn't abort. I was surprised I made it through, especially at the end. I must admit I did get a pretty good feeling when I was the only one on the road coming out of that mess, especially with a vehicle ill equipped for it. I guess zoomers would say "winner winner chicken dinner".