We went to our friends' place for supper last night. They live about 15 km from here. When we left, the police were blocking the road that goes from their house down a steep hill about 200 metres to the highway back to Victoria. They said the road was sheer ice, and the highway was blocked from the intersection at the bottom of the hill to Royal Oak, about 4 km south. They said that the highway crews would be out in about an hour. This was at 10:00 PM. They did say we could take the road in the other direction and work our way east and then south to Royal Oak at which point we could get back to the highway.
The roads were covered in black ice with a light dusting of snow. Even walking on them was treacherous. The road we had to take had two major hills, one with a 20% grade and both hills and several curves!
Needless to say, we inched our way down both hills at about 3 kmh. Before we started, I had let a car go ahead of me, and he was just as careful as we were. 
However there were two cars behind us who thought we should be going a lot faster. 
We did make the 7 km detour with no issues, other than white knuckles, and once we got onto Royal Oak near the highway, the two cars behind us passed us on the right (wrong side in this country) and went zooming off. (By that time the road had been salted and it was just wet pavement.) But, I thought, better to take a few extra minutes on a dangerous road than spend a couple of hours piled up in the ditch at the bottom of a hill.As for the forecast of 10 cm of snow, they overestimated by a factor of 10! The view outside is about the same as it was yesterday at this time. Just a trace of snow on the grass, parked cars and gardens. The little bit of snow that had fallen on the roads and sidewalks yesterday had melted and then frozen, hence the sheen of black ice.
