PSA Carry water and packaged food in your vehicle

Also prevents them from freezing to the windshield. anaterra, it's just lifting the wipers the way you would to replace the blades.

I really do learn something new everyday here...

Now the question is, do people who don't live in the DC Metro area know what this even means. lol

I think someone told me once that it's pretty much a DC thing.

If you flip your wipers up, you can more easily scrape the snow and ice off of your windshield. Your wipers also don’t get frozen stuck down against your window, so when you scrape off most of the snow (with your defrost running on high in your car while you are getting the snow off), you can flip your wipers back down and turn them on to continue to help you clear the windshield of ice while you clean off the roof & hood of your car.

We don’t have an issue with people snapping off wipers, so around here everyone who doesn’t park in a garage flips their wipers up when snow and/or ice is coming. 

Eta: oops! I started this reply before I had to go run my son to the movie theater and see that it has been responded to in the meantime. Sorry for the redundancy! 

I’m embarrassed to say that I currently have NO supplies in my vehicle, except a first aid kit, I think is still in there. But I am currently WFH and after totaling my car one icy commute home a couple years ago my ss stays home when it snows or threat of ice. I think I will gather some items for my kids though as I’m sure they are both unprepared as well and we are expecting bad weather in the morning.

One other ice commute a few years back I made it home safely but my car would not go up the slight incline to get into my subdivision. After SEVERAL attempts I just pulled it over on the side of the road and was going to walk to my house but everything was a sheet of ice and I was sure I would fall on my face. Luckily I had a beach towel in my car. I layed it on the ground with a foot at each end and slid or shuffled each foot forward. The towel gave me traction I otherwise did not have. When I got to each yard I could walk through the grass but then shuffled across each driveway or road until I got to my house.

My DD is a Type 1 diabetic, so we always,always had supplies in our cars. She’s married now, and both her and her DH have supplies for just about everything in their cars. They also live in New York, where it pays to be prepared.

Of course you won’t starve, but in the St. Louis area, it likes to dump snow while a cold front is coming thru. So you can get stuck on the expressway while a bone deep cold hits. The high tomorrow will be -8 Celsius, low of -14 Celsius, with one of the weird weather systems we get. So it can be just some snow flurries, or the system can make a last minute turn, and surprise, 12 inches of snow. You get stuck on the expressway in those circumstances, where you can’t run your car constantly, you’re going to want food for some energy

We definitely add our snow bags when we add the snow rushes to the car, and have needed food from them a time or two driving home from work in a storm.

And don’t be the idiot who goes on the shoulder to get around it the stopped cars.

When I was in grad school, I went to Cleveland pick up a college friend whose father had been unexpectedly hospitalized. I got caught for 10 hours in a snowstorm on the I90 outside Erie PA. Jackknifed semis blocked all the off ramps - for some reason that stretch the on ramps go up, and then idiots in SUVs went off road and got stuck, so we all got trapped for hours. The snow just kept piling up and it was eerie in the dark to be so surrounded and so alone. They brought out snowmobiles to move people whose cars ran out of gas because the emergency vehicles couldn’t get around the people who clogged the shoulder.

After about 8 hours, a tiny little Sammy Davis Jr lookalike popped out of his semi and told me we would be moving soon and to stay in his tracks. I seriously thought I was delusional, but I followed him to the OH border doing about 20 mph, once they pushed/towed all the dead vehicles out of the way.

All I had in the car was my coat, purse with my cell phone and 2 Tums. By the time I cleared PA I had no phone battery left, and very little gas and everything in downtown Cleveland was closed. It was a long day, and a hungry night. Drove back the next morning and was stunned to see all the cars in the gulley between the two lanes that I hadn’t seen in the dark. And lots of abandoned vehicles and semis still stuck on the off ramps.

This happened about 8 years ago in the Birmingham, AL - Atlanta, GA area.  The severity was a surprise and people where stuck at work and on the interstates.  Our nephew and his wife 7 mos pregnant at the time live right off the interstate and they walked over and gave out food, had travelers come back to their  house.  My sister was stuck at her office downtown as there was no way to navigate home.  Anytime there is a chance of snow or ice, she takes their 4 wheel drive Jeep to work.  

We don’t have to worry about snow and ice here, but I do make sure I have enough gas to make a round trip from home to the office. When we had that big power outage a few years ago, lot of people were stranded because they had planned to get gas after work. But with no electricity the pumps don’t work. And I do have something in my car to break the window if I am trapped in my car.

we're in FL but DH was stuck on the interstate overnight  in Atlanta during that storm - he had taken a day trip up for a business meeting. He was very grateful to not have unpacked the sleeping bag from the car after the last camping trip.