I noticed an increasing number of people lift their wiper blades off the wndshield when snow is expected. Is there a good reason for this or is it herd mentality?
I’ve heard people say it’s to keep the blades from freezing to the window. I’ve always found that frozen blades pop loose easily when you’re scraping the ice off anyhow.
So are they enlightened or monkey see - monkey do?
I’ve certainly had windshield wipers frozen to the windshield in the morning to the extent that it was difficult to pry them loose without damaging them, and when I did they still had chunks of ice attached to them making them pretty much useless until all that comes off.
It usually happens when it starts snowing while or just after I’ve been driving because then the car is still warm enough to melt the first layer of snow and have it refreeze as hard ice. If it starts snowing after my car has already cooled down, the snow stays snowy and comes off easy.
^what he said. they freeze to the windshield and it damages the rubber splines.
We just bought expensive wipers and it says on the package to lift them if we expect snow or a freeze. We’d end up trashing the plastic on the wiper if we turned them on when we had ice on the windshield.
What leahcim said. I’ve had wipers frozen to the glass and coated in millimetres of ice, which merged into the bottom of 10 cm of snow. The combination required determined scraping to remove, and I was worried about damaging the wiper blades, especially because it wasn’t my car. 
I had forgotten to lift the blades, even though my cousins’ cars nearby all had theirs lifted. :smack:
Where do you live? New England snow mixed with ice (common) will certainly freeze your windshield wipers to the bottom of the windshield and it often isn’t easy to get them out. This may not be a common problem where snow = powder but that isn’t the case everywhere.
you can rip the blades pulling or scrapping them off a frozen window, it might not take chunks out but it might make splits the blade. it also lets you scrape full force everywhere because the wipers are already out of the way.
Boston resident weighing in.
Makes a huge difference in places where snow and ice are a real concern. It’s not just that the blades stick- ice cakes over the blades making it harder to clear off. It takes two seconds to pop the blades off the glass and saves time if significant snow or ice is expected
Upstate New York, land of 100 inch snow, chiming in. Wipers freeze to windows all the time. I don’t understand a claim that they pop off easily.
I find that lifting up the wipers make cleaning the windshield easier
Had a g/f that tried to run the wipers frozen to the windshield, she ended up stripping the attachment of the wiper-arm and the spindle.
I understand a bit better. I can see how New England or midwest ice storms would be a real pain regarding the wipers. I’m in Colorado. Yea, the snow tends to be powder and cleans up easily especially if the car is cold when the snow falls. I’ve never noticed any damage to my wipers by gently knocking them loose when scraping the ice off the glass.
If it really helps, I wonder why none of the auto manufacturers design them to lift? I had several Ford sedans back in the 80’s that would park the wipers off the glass by lifting the arms up on some small plastic wedges. (That was in Chicago) I never noticed it to be any different than my wipers now that stay on the glass all the time.
So for all you wiper lifters, do you notice the blades losing contact with the glass when you’re driving over 60mph and wiping? - streaks?
Besides freezing weather the blades can take a set. Keeping them from touching can help that. In addition UV rays can harm the material. on a car it’s not too big a deal since blades are pretty cheap but on my motor home they cost a lot more.
Since we live full time in our motor home we often sit in one place for several months in sunny places like AZ and move on when it gets too warm or we get too bored. The blades can see a lot of sun.
I have used blade covers for UV protection and plastic foam to keep the blades from touching the windshield and my eight year old blades are still in good shape.
I’m from Colorado, around Denver, and have lived in this area all my life. Only in the last 3 or 4 or 5 years have I seen people lifting their blades off the windshield and just figured it was, as stated above, herd mentality. I’ve never had any real problem with cleaning the windshield after a snow storm and we seldom have ice storms. Of course, I’d never try to run the blades until I had at least scraped the window some.
I can’t speak for what they do in the mountains, btw, but it’s very new in Denver.
Bob
Eight year old wiper blades? :eek:
A stuck wiper can not only be damaged as it rips free, you can also blow the fuse for the motor if the wiper is stuck hard enough.
Virtually all wiper arms lift.
Decades ago, some recessed wipers could only be lifted if they were stopped short of being recessed. Still, the arm was spring loaded and was able to be retracted from the windshield.
In 21 years of driving in New England and Minnesota, the handful of times my wipers have wound up “frozen to the windshield”, to the extent that they cant’ just be readily popped loose while clearing the windshield, have been ice storms. In those cases the whole vehicle is covered in a thick coat of ice, and freeing the wipers is not the primary impediment to driving.
I’ll leave mine down. If it’s an ice storm and I’ve got the wipers sticking up into the air, they’re going to get a nice sheath of ice around them, like a tree branch. I’d rather have the edge of the blade resting on the windshield, preventing it from becoming fully encased. I’d also rather not run the risk of high winds bending my wiper arms, being a more inviting target for vandalism, or stretching out the springs thereby reducing the effectiveness of the wipers.
Going to have to go with herd mentality on this one, sorry. 
Of course all of the above is heavily influenced by the fact that there’s just something about the look of a car doing the “wiper salute” that really irritates me for unknown reasons.
Or break the mechanism that controls the rotation. I’ve had that happen and it sucks; :mad: much worst than a blown fuse in the winter. 
From New England -
I find that when I lift the blades, they don’t need any cleaning at all. However, when they are against the window, then more stuff sticks to them (once broken away from the windshield) making overall cleaning more difficult and time consuming.
Plus, as people have mentioned - once you have gunk stuck to the wipers, it can be a pain to clean them off sufficiently so that all the blade contacts the windshield. If you miss a tiny bit, you get a thin streak of clean and the rest of the windshield is opaque from the dried up mixture of water and salt spewed up from cars in front of you.
Rather than use blade covers and foam and all that to protect blades, I just get a pair of silblades - those things last forever. Before I found them, I was replacing wiper blades every 6 months.
I live in the mountains in Colorado, and I’ve been lifting my wipers (sounds kind of kinky) for years. If I don’t, they will stick, or get lost in a huge mound of snow in a good storm. Everybody does it around here.