You had me going…
Great story-telling, Zyanthia. Thanks!
I won’t spend more than a few seconds and a handful of swipes scraping and clearing my SUV. I think the snow cloud trailing behind me for the first few miles looks really cool and I am fundamentally lazy about chores I deem unnecessary. Almost all of my driving is on high speed roads so my vehicle heats up and defrosts in a few minutes anyway. I am from the South and didn’t have to deal with such things growing up and I don’t plan on starting now. I am still bitter about the frost and snow situation up here and refuse to acknowledge it. The only time I ever had a problem with it was when I was trying to see out of the little portal I made and got flash blinded when the sun shone through the rest of the frosted over windshield like it was made of a billion brilliant crystals. That made for a tense few seconds.
Shagnasty made me LOL. 
My other pet peeve is people with the Crown of Snow on the top of their vehicle. I get that you can’t get every bit of snow off, but FFS, please at least try to not drive around with three feet of snow on your roof. Get one of those giant snow-pusher things to remove the snow. It’s easy, honest.
I hate this. It’s completely unnecessary. I never saw it until maybe the last five years or so and it’s retarded. If your wipers are frozen to your windshield (which happens very rarely, even here in the land of snow and ice) you’re going to have to chip the ice from the windshield anyway. In the long run, you’re creating more work for yourself. The only time it could potentially be a benefit, it’s prevented from being a benefit because you still have to dick around with them before you drive, only now you’re done it twice.
Listen, I’m from Buffalo. I goddamn well know snow and ice like nobody’s business. This pulling the wipers from the windshield business as a preventative measure is nonsense. I don’t know why it pisses me off so much, but it does. I challenge anyone to explain to me how this could possibly be an efficient method of dealing with frozen wiper blades. It just isn’t.
That doesn’t always help. It’s snowing outside as I type. Of course, I live at 2800’ and we are in the midst of the first serious winter storm of the season.
But it will be gone tomorrow and I can make my morning doughnut run without having to worry about ice on the streets.
I hope.
Seriously? You don’t think not having to free the wiper blades doesn’t help? You think not having to work around the blades doesn’t make ice & snow removal easier?
Your logic is failing here.
You know Buffalo snow and ice. Don’t let your arrogance blind you. You know the biggest difference between Buffalo snow and Chicago snow? Wet. You get more snow, and more cold, but that means you rarely get liquid water between your wiper blade and the glass that doesn’t evaporate before it freezes again. It’s not so rare in other places. It’s a big world out there.
I keep seeing the thread title as “Clean off your Windows asshole” and thinking, “that’s the worst screensaver EVER…”
A special message to about 80% of the people on my street:
You know you wouldn’t have to scrape snow and ice off your vehicle when the temps are -5 and lower if you would just GET RID OF THAT HOARDED CRAP IN YOUR FRIGGIN GARAGE AND PARK YOUR VEHICLES IN THERE!!
8 out of 10 homes on my street have a double car garage filled with so much crap that they park outside and then whine and complain when they don’t start in cold weather or get broken into in the middle of the night.
If it’s gotten to the point that the blades are frozen to the windshield, you already have some work to do chipping the ice off the windshield and the blades are going to be freed in that process anyway.
I’m not in Buffalo anymore, but close enough to still get plenty of snow and ice. The lake effect just happens to come from a different lake. Buffalo and all of Western NY get plenty of wet snow and freezing rain.
Consider the following: On any given day that a wet snow or cold rain can turn to ice, you and I park next to each other in the lot before going into the office. I walk into the building. You raise your driver side wiper blade, walk around to passenger side and raise that blade and then walk into the building. One of two things happen. The wet snow or rain freezes, or it doesn’t. If it doesn’t, we both have to either remove the wet snow or ignore the cold rain when we leave. In either case, you have to dick around with your wipers for the second time of the day. I just have to remove the snow with a brush (never needing to touch the wiper arms) or do nothing.
If the wet snow freezes, or worse, the rain freezes, we both have to expend a considerable amount of energy chipping away the ice to clear our windshields. At that point, the amount of effort it adds to free the wipers from the windshield is negligible. We’ve both got to chip away all that ice, so what effort have you saved? In fact, the point where the blade meets the windshield makes a great starting point for freezing rain because it gives you at least some small strips of exposed glass to get under with the scraper. Kind of like stripping paint, you need to get under it to remove it.
I suppose there are rare instances where there is just enough moisture to freeze the blades to the windshield without requiring a full chipping away of the windshield. In that case, the worst I have to do is is get out and manually lift each of the blades up, which is still half of the work you’ve done on your wipers for the day.
I stand by my opinion that this practice of lifting the wiper arms up is retarded and serves no useful purpose.
You’re the one who claimed it “very rarely” happens to you. I tried to give you the benefit of the doubt and offer an environmental explanation for why it maybe very rarely happens. My time in Buffalo environs saw lots and lots of deep snow, cold snow, and rather little wet snow and thaws between snows.
What makes it easier is that - as my wiper blades get stuck frozen into the ice on the windshield rather *often *- if I lift the wipers, then I’ve got a clear expanse of windshield, and I’m not chipping at the rubber of the wipers and/or tearing them free from the ice. It’s easier to get the ice off when I don’t have to work around the wipers, and it’s easier to free the wipers before they’re stuck by raising them. Otherwise, I have to raise them anyhow to clear under them after I’ve chipped enough ice around them to free them. I have less work to do if I can simply clear the windshield and lower the wipers, instead of chipping around, raising the wipers, scraping where the wipers lie and under them, and then lowering the wipers.
Now, all that being said…I almost never remember to raise the wipers when I leave the car. But when I do, it’s *much *easier to clear it in the morning.
What I said was very rare was the circumstance where the blades are frozen to a windshield that doesn’t otherwise need ice removal. If it’s just snow, I don’t have to touch the wipers. If it’s ice, I have a bunch of scraping to do anyway and freeing the blades is the least of my worries. Plus, like I said, under really bad frozen rain (the worst scraping chore) after I’ve knocked the blades free with the scraper, it give me some exposed glass as a starting point to get under the ice. Otherwise, I have to shave it off until I hit glass, which is a pain in the ass.
c) I start the car, turn on the heater in defrost mode full blast, turn on the rear window defroster and then go back inside for 5 minutes while it does it’s magic. Works like a charm (though occasionally I do have to turn on the windshield wipers to clear away the resulting slush). This also warms up the engine and engine oil, but really it’s all about me not being cold. 
ETA: Admittedly, I don’t get the inches thick frost/ice I used to when I lived on the east coast. As with John Mace’s solution, I moved away to a place where we only get a light frost on the windows during winter.
Well, that’s why you leave the front window for last. Hopefully by the time the side and rear windows are clear, the bottom part of the windshield has been mostly thawed by the defroster. But whatever works for you; as long as you can see where you’re going, I don’t mind how you do it.
XT, if I left a running car unattended the chances are it wouldn’t be there when I came out again. And the asshole would probably be driving 10 mph down Dorothy Lane 'cause he didn’t clean the windows off before he stole the car. 
I wish we could all be as perfect as Frank. Sometimes people just forget or don’t know the weather is going to cause their car windows to be frosted over, and don’t have time to scrape them off properly, and cannot afford to be late for work.
God forbid I wake up one morning to have him tailgating me as Im trying to navigate down the street with both of my windows open and my head sticking out the window, trying to get a mile down the road until my windows clear up. 
That’s because the SDMB is inhabited by the most virtuous people in existence.
The Dope is also the home of the only smokers in the world who never throw their butts out the window or dump the contents of their ashtrays in parking lots.
A few years ago, I was stopped at a light and an oncoming car with the Crown of Snow stopped at the light, the snow slid down his windshield and ripped off one of his windshield wipers. I was amused.
Stopping quickly with the ‘crown of snow’ is how I clear the ‘glaze of ice’ off my windshield. Duh.
I bet the vast majority of people who do this do not think of themselves as people who do this. They only do it “when they have to” or “in emergencies” or something. Or clearly, their car isn’t that icy, it’s just a little frosted, they can see fine, but that asshole over there, Jesus Christ, I can’t believe he’s driving like that.