[JimD]

I am also not sure how much difference winter tires would have made. Seems like the major issue, the swerve left, might have been an over correction of the initial right movement. That is pretty easy to do when a rear wheel drive vehicle oversteers, possibly because of ice.

We do not get enough snow around here to do this but when I lived in the frozen north, we liked to go to a parking lot first snow and do some donuts. You'd need to switch the stability control off. It helps get the feel for the car in the slick conditions and also is a good reminder about under and over steer correction.

Understeer (plowing in the front) is easy, just get off the gas and leave the brake alone until you regain control. Oversteer (the rear end gets loose and kind of wants to be in front of the car) is trickier. You have to initially steer into the slide but if that is all you do you will hook up and loose control. So as the front and rear of the car gets into agreement, you have to steer with the front the direction you were trying to go. The momentary sliding sideways slows you enough to allow this to work. If you wait too long to steer back the way you want to go, you spin (the rear end pendullums to the other side and can do that quick enough you can't catch it). If you are only off a little, you swing from side to side several oscellations. I got my last refresher on this at M school last year. I didn't spin but I swug a little side to side the first couple times. The instructor has you get the car up near the cornering limit on a wet skid pad (stability control off) and then he slams the emergency brake to cause the rear to loose traction completely. It is more violent than most oversteer conditions but probably not one induced by a patch of ice. If you can recover correctly 3 times in a row, you can try drifting around the skidpad. That is harder than the snow drifting (donuts) I've done many times because the skidpad is inconsistent. It has rough surface, then smooth, then rough. I wasn't good at recognizing the transition so I never made it all the way around. Maybe half way was my best.

Jim