I was originally going to post a photo of a wear indicator mentioning that, with fitting the new snow tires, I’ll need to get new tires next spring. Then I saw this one tire from the rear of the driver’s side.
With every set of tires that I’ve had on the car (this is the second or third, I think, in ~180,000 miles) I’ve had uneven wear from one wheel. It’s spotty, paneled, and results in a series of flat spots around the inside of the tire. I’d think that rotating the tires more often would help it, but I think I let these tires go a little too long without rotating them. They might not have even been done this year, having gone since the snow tires were removed in the spring.
This wasn’t losing air, but I’m really lucky that I didn’t have a sudden tire failure. I’ll definitely be buying new tires before spring now. (And no, the snow tires don’t have this kind of wear… But I did get an alignment some last year, after buying these tires but before the snow tires got much use.)