ResearchWinter Weather Home Survival Guide
When you move from the Southwest to the Northeastern regions, your first winter can catch you by surprise. There's a little more to it than you thought. Herein, a guide to help you adjust to this new environment nature has in store for you.
Rule number one: Ice Is Slippery. If you aren't used to walking where it's icy, you'll have to learn in time to walk with 'ice legs'. This is where you take each step deliberately, keeping one foot on the ground until you're sure the other one has traction. They sell shoes to help, but even the most slip-proof shoe isn't safe to run on an icy sidewalk in. Just get used to the idea that walking takes work, and save your spine from painful falls. Walking with a cane helps - better to use a cane for a while than be injured in a fall and have to use one all the time! This is yet another reason to bundle up warm - the extra clothing provides some padding if you fall.
Number Two: Snow shovels are only good for shoveling snow. If you try to scrape ice with them, you'll find that to be an excellent method for breaking your snow shovel. Instead, get an ice chipper, which resembles a flattened-out garden hoe. This is a sturdy tool which can be used to scrape the driveway and walkways or you can hammer it straight down to crack up a thick ice layer.
Save your back: Invest in a sack of ice-melt, an environmentally-safe substance sold by the bag at hardware stores for a few dollars. Sprinkle this on the walkway with a cup the way you'd salt your food. I find that a coffee-cup of ice melt is adequate for about six feet of sidewalk. In a pinch you can use Kosher rock salt, but it doesn't work as well. If you do this treatment before each snowfall, by the way, it will melt the ice as it forms and you will have a much easier time with keeping the walkway de-iced.
For the car, you're going to want a garage and hopefully it's heated. If not, you should keep your gas tank as full as possible because gas tends to develop a layer of harmful ice when it's just a thin layer in the bottom of the tank. For the battery, either buy an engine-heating pad or - a simple idea when you hear it - just remove the battery and bring it inside with you every night, perhaps keeping it in the basement up on a box or crate so it's off the concrete floor. Be sure your radiator is running antifreeze, and equip your car with jumper cables, ice scraper, and extra windshield washer fluid. Carrying a bag of sand or kitty litter in the trunk will give you an out should you find your car stuck in snow; pour the bag's contents under each wheel to add traction.
Speaking of cars, pay attention to the signs in your area that designate snow plow routes. They aren't kidding about towing a car if it's in the way, and even if not you could find your car buried under a pile of snow from a passing plow.
For your home, check your insulation and weatherstripping. Have your furnace checked at the first sign of cold weather. Stock up a box of filters and change the furnace heater filter at least once a month. You can even write down the date of the last filter change on a post-it and slap it on the heater to help you remember. Turn off all valves on pipes leading to an exterior faucet to avoid damage from freezing. Consider adding a water heater blanket, a special covering sold in hardware stores to insulate your water heater, which will have to work harder during the winter months to heat water from outside.
Have a safe and fun winter... and remember that dealing with ice and snow may seem like a hassle at first, but after a couple of years it becomes routine. It grows on you gradually. I've gotten so used to it, I've decided that I never want to live away from the seasons again.