For those hailing from climates which generally speaking, don’t get snow:
Do you know what I mean when I refer to a snow brush? An ice-scraper?
You know. Those things that I (growing up outside of Philly) thought that everyone in the world had kicking around in their trunks? Do you have one?
Would you know how to dig a car out of a parking space if it had been snowing heavily?
Say you get hit by a winter storm overnight. The sidewalk outside your house is both ice-coated and snow-covered. Do you know how to deal with it?
I was chatting with some friends today about how I, for one, am more than ready for winter. I was the only one in the room who was, and one of my friends (from Dallas) admitted that last year, the first time it snowed, she had to hunt all over to find some way to clear off her car, and ended up using a metal snow shovel. I then promptly realized that I was the only one from a non-horridly-warm region, as I was in a room with two Texans, two Californians, and a Hawaiin (I know that’s not the right word. SHe’s from Hawaii, and I have no idea what the proper term is for a word with that many vowels.)
On the other hand, the girl from Hawaii got her turn to laugh at me when I explained beach tags and that, really, I’m not quite sure what people do at the actual beach, if not just hang out on the boardwalk.
I’m from the Deep South, and didn’t see snow until I was, oh, about ten. We got about a foot of snow right before Christmas that lasted a couple of days. I nearly knocked myself out trying to make a snow angel like on TV. When I moved to Maryland in January 2004 there was snow everywhere, I’d never imagined such a white world. It took days to learn to walk on snow and ice, and even after a lot of practice I still busted my butt.
I wouldn’t know how to dig out my car, and I’m not exactly sure what a snow brush is, although I assume it’s used to brush away snow.
I’m coming up on my second NE Ohio winter and I’m still learning stuff (plus, living in an apartment, I don’t have to deal with the sidewalk/parking lot maintenance stuff).
I knew what a snow brush and an ice scraper were before I moved up here - TN does occasionally get snow (and gets ice storms more often than snow). I do need to hunt mine down - I know they’re in the car, I’m just not sure where.
Despite living in the south my whole life, I don’t feel like “a southerner”, but I probably have the requisite snow ignorance, not so proudly hailing from the region that was horribly gridlocked with people spending the night in their cars on the highway last year when an inch of snow fell midday.
I know what a snow brush is, also an ice scraper (even have one somewhere, but probably couldn’t find it and would use my credit card). I have a snow shovel and could probably shovel my walk, though I’m not sure what to do about ice.
If my car were snowed in I guess I would just go at it w/ a regular household broom and the snow shovel (plastic) but there would be no reason to do so, as all businesses would be closed and no roads would be plowed.
I was conceived in Atlanta. I was born in New York City. I was reared in South Carolina and Georgia. I suffered mightily in Michigan and Ohio. I’m more comfortable in winter than I ever want to be.
If a winter storm hit Atlanta and the roadways and sidewalks were both ice-coated and snow-covered, we would simply have to sit it out and wait for it to melt and pray your electricity stays on and that there’s enough food in the house. Atlanta as a region is not equipped to deal with heavy snow and ice removal. It would effectively paralyze the city for 2-4 days. As carlotta said, there would be nowhere to go, anyway. It’s happened before.
Of course I know how to use an ice scraper and snow brush (brush first, then scrape frost from glass), I don’t own a snow shovel now that I’ve moved back down here. I only have two small bags of rock salt “just in case” and no kitty litter for traction. The driveway is so steep trying to drive any of the cars over the ice would likely cause them to slide downhill into the street and possibly down in the neighbor’s yard across they way. No thanks.
I haven’t heard of a snow brush, but I do have an ice scraper. It’s just a small plastic one with a rubberized handle. We moved last year into a house with a heated and cooled basement garage, so we don’t need it for mornings. What a Godsend that is. Still, after a day in a parking lot, the windshield might need scraping.
Our area doesn’t get much snow — maybe once or twice a year, one to four inches in a bad storm. But we do get at least one pretty bad ice storm almost every year. So, we do have a couple of bags of ice salt, especially for the wooden steps and porch.
My wife is from Minnesota, so she’s pretty capable about handling things. I remember how she used to laugh when she first moved here, and the local news broadcast PSAs on how to deal with hypothermia if the temp dipped below 30F. Where she came from, that would have been a balmy winter evening.
I am from Louisiana. We didn’t have a snow brush, snow scaper, or a snow shovel at all. Then again, it only snowed twice in my 21 years there. It did frost a fair amount though. We just threw water on the windshield to clear it. There was no way or desire to clear roads or sidewalks. We just stayed home and waited for it to melt.
It snows every now and then here near the coast of South Carolina. Mostly we get wicked sleet storms and the world comes to a halt. We get thick frost on windshield, though, and an ice scraper comes in handy. If I can’t find the one I used last winter, I look for one well before I need one. They’re like a gun it’s better to have one and not need it than need one and not have one.
I’ve always had a scraper, and I’ve lived in non-wintry places since I was six. It’s just one of those things you have in the car; I guess I got that from my parents. When I was in Georgia it snowed a couple of times and I was lending my scraper to other people in the apartment parking lot so they could clear their windshields enough to drive.
What really really bugged me there was the people who would clear just a tiny little window, barely enough for them to see straight ahead. Um…people…isn’t that kinda dangerous? I did learn the hard way once to get all the snow off my car before getting on the (non-icy) freeway. Oopsie. Flying snow looks cool but I bet the people behind me weren’t too happy.
I haven’t seen snow here yet. My SO is from Michigan, though, so I expect I’ll do just fine if it does snow. At least I know my limits and go really slow in snow, unlike everybody else on the road I saw in Georgia.
The last snow I saw was a quarter-inch or so in New Orleans last Christmas. I kid you not. I didn’t go out driving in it, but it was so damn surreal!
Lived all my life in South Alabama and Florida except for two years in Ohio. That is where I learned about snow and did have the necessary tools to deal with it.
The biggest lesson I learned there was NOT to stick your keys in your mouth on a zero degree day just before inserting them into the door lock. I must have gotten my keys “iced” in my door lock half a dozen times before it fully sank in not to do this. This was in the days before keyless entry.
Currently I own nothing in the way of an ice scraper or snow brush and I would not know how to dig my car out if it were snowed in a parking space. My hubby is from NJ so I am sure he knows how to do this.
About 3 years ago or so, it flurried here a little in Tallahassee. It occurred around 3am in the morning. There I was outside in the cold rain staring up at the back porch light looking at the small flurries mixed in with the cold cold rain. It lasted about 15 minutes.
I come from a climate with snow (Ohio) and am not a Southerner, but I wouldn’t properly know how to deal with digging the car out (it never snows that much in SW Ohio) or the sidewalk thing. I’m sure I could figure out how to get the car out. And if it were up to me I’d just ignore the sidewalk, but I suppose if I had to do something, I guess maybe I’d remove most of the snow but leave an inch or half an inch on top of the ice.
I was a graduate student at the time and when I went to school, I had to stay all day. So I had tons of books and school stuff with me and also had to bring along lunch and other goodies to eat with me (I was extremely poor at the time, so eating out of a vending machine would have been a luxury.) Very oral here, so no place for my keys to go but in my mouth. I see lots of people doing that, however now that I have veneers on my teeth I don’t do that anymore.
Not really a Southerner, but seeing as how Albuquerque doesn’t get much snow (and Las Cruces even less), it took a while for me to get used to dealing with the constant scraping and the like of living in Huntingdon. That said, I do have one of those long-handled scraper/brush combos, which I keep in the backseat of the car. I also found that I kept my car a lot cleaner than the natives. Every time it snowed, I went out the same day with the brush and got the snow off, while many other people just let their cars sit under 6 or 12 or 18 inches. And talking about digging out cars–I once helped someone dig out her Mazda MX-3 after it had been plowed over. You couldn’t even see the car, there was that much snow on it. Luckily, I never had to dig out mine.
My parents keep a little rock salt, but the place I’m renting has no snow shovel or rock salt. Not that I need it since my front is mostly grass and dirt with a small porch that’s covered by an overhang.
Born and raised in AR, live in SoCal now. Because we got ice storms more frequently than snow when I lived in the South, I would know how to use an ice scraper and a snow brush. Digging the car out and dealing with snow or ice-covered driveways and sidewalks would be something I wouldn’t be familiar with. That would be more my husband’s territory, being as he spent much of his childhood in Illinois and shoveled a LOT of snow.
Because of the ice storms, we did get icy sidewalks in AR, but most people just waited for them to thaw out on their own. (Which of course meant that many people fell on their butts at least once a winter, myself included.)
