I have heat tape on my incoming water line. Only thing that saves me.
In answer to the OP, I can’t believe nobody had stated the obvious: PEE ON IT!
Now I want to move to the 44th parallel.
We here in Central NY have now had over 138 inches of snow. It’s in the teens today, the sun is shining, and 30 miles north of us, they are getting a foot of snow a day. I shudder watching the radar on the weather, that big blue line right above us can dip and hammer us again.
If you’re spinning your tires on ice and don’t have salt or kitty litter in your car, you can use your floor mats, or look around for some branches to put under the wheels so they can get a grip. I’ve done both, in a pinch.
Hey I’ve got news for you. If you’re turning to 45, it’s no longer the heater, it’s the air conditioning! 
Traction Aids. Really, the whole idea of carrying around messy sand and kitty litter is absurd to me. These things usually come in convenient little boxes that don’t take up much room, they are rather inexpensive, and are reusable. I can’t figure out why more people don’t have these things!
Though in the 13 years I’ve had my tiny non-4x4 but winter-tire-equipped Tercel (yes, same car the whole time) I’ve used my traction aids only once, because I had to turn into very deep snow to allow an emergency vehicle to pass. It took one placement of them and I was out.
I strictly follow this rule, which I learned from my parents 30 years ago, but I wonder if it really applies in Minnesota or other places where the gasoline is 10%
alcohol. Not that I’ll ever find out, since I never let the gas gauge get below 1/2.
I never heard of traction aids, but they can go in my emergency breakdown kit with the granola bar and blankie.
In my mothers house, the cold water pipe to the upstairs bathroom could freeze overnight, if it was very cold (under -10º F) and the wind was from the Northwest. The pipes ran through a semi-exterior wall (the front entry, which had no heat vents in it) on the NW side of the house. Underneath that was a basement room, also with no heat – we had to remember to keep the door of that room open when it got cold.
Generally, only the cold water pipe froze – the hot pipe was warm enough to last until the morning, when it was used again. Sometimes we left the cold water running a bit overnight when it was real cold. When it froze, we would fill a bucket of hot water in the tub and use that to flush the toilet. (Sitting above that was actually nice on a cold Minnesota morning!)
Had a friend who had to replace much of the plumbing, some furniture, and redo walls and floors last winter when her heat went out while she was on vacation.
She had bought one of those fancy new thermostats with timers and multiple temp settings – the battery in that died, so it shut off the heat! (Really lousy design.) So a $1 battery failure caused an insurance claim of over $10,000.
My grandmother once told us kids a story of the time she almost got frostbitten hands in the Twin Cities.
A cold, snowy day, and she and other nursing students rode in a sleigh from Lake Calhoun down Lake St. past the cemetery (at Cedar Ave.). She had refused to wear her gloves, because she wanted to show off a fancy new muff she had.* And her hands got so cold they were nearly frostbitten.
We couldn’t understand the problem – "why didn’t you just stop and go into one of the stores on Lake St. to warm up?’ She told us Lake St was at the edge of the city then, and there were no stores and hardly any homes along it at all.
- Yes, this was part of a grandma’s rant to kids on why you should dress warmly during the winter and not pay attention to fashion trends.
So… what’s an ice dam?
Roof snow melts a little in the sun, runs toward the roof edge and freezes as temps cool down again at night. Now you have a dam of ice on the roof edge. Subsequent melt water, instead of running off, piles up behind the dam, and may soak in to the roof. After all, most roofs are only intended to shed water in the gravity-fed direction and have no protection for backflow. An ice dam allows backflow.
Maybe QtM is busy, so I can answer that.
Fancy alarm systems have options to sense temperatures, just like fire, smoke, glass breaking, door entering.
Or you can get a poor man’s version, a gadget that turns on a light when the temp gets low. Put the light in a window, and if a caretaker driving by or a neighbor sees a light in an otherwise unoccupied home, they know the heat has failed.
I had a $99 Radio Shack gadget once that sensed many of the things the fancier alarms do, and could be programmed to dial up to 4 numbers with a message that told what was wrong…low temp, hi temp, loud noise (like a fire alarm), sensor tripped (door opened) or power outage (it was battery backed up). It even continued to dial the numbers until one of them called back, and allowed the caller to listen in to the room (for a burglar). Probably the best $99 bargain I ever had, as it alerted me once when the furnace failed.
Actually, the real problem is usually insufficient insulation in the attic, allowing escaping heat to melt the snow on the roof above. Then as the meltwater runs down toward the edges of the roof (which are colder), it freezes, and forms an ice dam. That can cause leakage, like Musicat described.
A temporary fix is laying old panty hose filled with rock salt across you roof. Really – that’s not a joke! You will see that on the roofs of houses up here.
Another “experienced winter trick”
We Minnesotans think its funny when snow is projected and there is a sudden run on food at the grocery store. You see, we usually maintain pantries. I have enough spaghetti and spaghetti sauce to last a week. And that isn’t even getting into the beans, tomatoes, tuna fish, soup, canned peaches, 25 lb bag of rice, or side of beef in the freezer (which also contains several loaves of bread). The vegetables would all come out of the freezer (except for the sweet potatoes, potatoes, beets, carrots - those generally keep several weeks…) - and we’d run out of milk, but even then, there is condensed and dry in the house for in a pinch.
I might go overboard (and I’m not even Mormon) but I don’t know anyone who if they were snowed in for a week couldn’t feed themselves - unless they are a bachelor who lives off delivery pizza.
The best way I have seen to prevent this is to prepare in advance, before winter, and insert a heating wire under shingles near the roof edge in a W pattern. Turning on the current to the wire melts the ice dam.
Yes, the key is preparation. Well before the freezing starts wipe the door seals with Armor-All or 303 Protectant. This will prevent them from freezing shut. That would also be the time to lube your locks with some spray lubricant.
“Yanks, educate us Southern folk on all things winter.”
As a Canadian, I am kinda surprised that you don’t think we could be of any help for you re: winter conditions:)
That said, it looks as though most of what you need has been offered, so I’m off now.
an seanchai
I stock up starting at end of summer, a few extra items a week. I squirrel away a stick of butter, a package of cheese, a loaf of bread, and hamburger in the freezer. Spaghetti, sauce, toilet paper, medicine, and extra cat litter and cat food. That will cover us for a couple days, I feel secure with extra bare basics. I also buy extras when winter comes, like eggs, bacon, and soup. It’s not that I’m afraid of starving, and it’s not that I CAN’T mush down to the grocery store in the snow if I absolutely have to, but…I prefer not to! …Someone will whine, “we have no cookies, why don’t we make lasagna, we’re low on beer” - and if I have bare basics for a couple of days, I can say, suck it up, we’re eating what we have until the roads get plowed!