What Are All-Weather Tires?

All-Weather tires, occasionally referred to as "Premium Traction" tires, are non-winter tires that are marked with the three-peak mountain snowflake (3PMSF) symbol and designed to be a year-round solution for drivers in environments that experience all four seasons, but don't receive sufficient snowfall or icy conditions to require a dedicated winter tire.

The requisite test to qualify for the 3PMSF mark is a spin test (ASTM F1805) that measures acceleration traction in medium-packed snow only. In that regard, all-weather tires guarantee a minimum level of traction in that very specific scenario. The 3PMSF mark makes no guarantee of braking or cornering traction in snow, and there is no ice component of the test.

The ASTM testing provides reliable insight on a tire's performance in the test environment, but when driven in simulated real-world conditions, Tire Rack's winter testing has found some non-3PMSF marked, all-season tires outperform other, all-weather tires. Performance among all-weather tires varies considerably, but most importantly none of the 3PMSF marked all-season tires tested can match the capability of a true winter tire in snow or on ice.

All-Weather tires can be found across a wide variety of tire categories and performance types, from Touring All-Season Passenger Car tires to Highway All-Season Tires. As such, the "all-weather" moniker is, at best, a performance metric and an attribute of specific tires, and is not a dedicated tire category. You can find all-weather tires on the Tire Rack website by using the "Severe Snow Service Rated" filtering option in search results.

Interestingly, Goodyear first used the "All Weather" nomenclature in 1916, and "All Weather" has been a registered trademark of the company since 1948, 51 years before the 3PMSF symbol was created. Similar to calling all facial tissue "Kleenex®," the use of the term all-weather has become somewhat genericized, and while it still does very specifically refer to certain Goodyear tires, as discussed above, it is also used to more broadly to refer to all-season tires with a 3PMSF symbol.