All-Season vs. All-Weather Tires: What’s the Difference?
Either type of tire will work in a range of weather, but there’s also a subtle distinction that matters
Imagine this: It’s an early winter morning and you’re researching your next tire purchase online. You’ve pulled up two sets of nearly identical rubber donuts, both round and black, both labeled as “all-season” tires. To most shoppers, these two tires might as well be the same. But one bears a symbol on its sidewall that the other distinctly lacks: a graphic that looks like three mountain peaks with a snowflake inside them.
The truth is, these two tires are not equals. They’re both all-season tires, but the symbol, called the Three-Peak Mountain Snowflake, or 3PMSF for short, has significant meaning. Tires bearing this mark meet a standard for acceleration traction in snow as determined by the American Society of Testing and Materials (ASTM). In other words, they’ve met an objective traction standard for winter driving, which should give you more confidence in their snow performance than you’ll get from the glittering generalities bandied about by tire salesmen or manufacturer marketing materials.
All-Season vs. All-Weather: Definitions
All-season tires are the do-it-alls of the tire world, blending traits from both winter and summer tires into a tire capable of providing year-round traction, even in light snow. They’re the tires most commonly fitted to new cars from the factory. They’re pretty good at everything and expert at nothing, which makes them the right choice for the mixed weather found in much of the United States.
Though the ASTM offers a formal definition for all-season tires, it’s broad, stating that all-season tires offer a “tread design providing dry, wet, and snow traction performance for an optimized balance for year-round performance.” This means that the all-season designation is given to a tire by its manufacturer rather than bestowed on it by meeting a testing standard. And because the range of use for this kind of tire is broad, the scrutiny of its label can be modest. In other words, you needn’t worry when a tire claims to be an all-season tire; depending on its design goals, it may lean more toward wet or dry traction, low noise, or longevity over grip, but it should still demonstrate reasonable performance in a wide variety of environments.
When all-season tires meet the 3PMSF standard, they fit into a subcategory of all-season tires known as all-weather tires. Qualifying for this label requires the tire to accelerate with 110 percent of the traction of an all-season reference tire when driving in a straight line on packed snow covered in 1 to 2 inches of loose snow.
The bottom line here is that all-weather tires are all-season tires that meet a higher standard for snow traction. Think of them like your friend who keeps a roadside survival kit in their trunk—over-prepared, perhaps, but never caught off-guard.
Also, it’s worth noting that Goodyear has been using the all-weather label for certain tires under trademark since 1948, decades before the 3PMSF standard was created.
