Not in case of emergency. Ice. Like water in solid form.

Yeah. Ok, a background. I don't worry too much about winter emergencies. I'm a very competent winter driver, make sure my car is up to snuff, keep an emergency kit in the car, have adequate tools. But today I learned a lesson I won't soon forget.

After living in PA my whole life, I had though I'd seen it all. I was wrong. 2 feet of snow? I'd take that in a heartbeat over what I dealt with. So what happened you say?

On monday I drove home through moderate snow conditions. I drive a 2004 saturn ion redline. It has aftermarket kumho all season performance tires. The new ones, which offer 'improved winter traction'. This is true. They worked as good as any I've used, barring snow tires.

I got home with a mile of slush on my car (I drive 30 miles one way to work) and thought nothing of it. After all, I've seen it thousands of times before and it's nothing major.

The next morning, my fiancee comes in crying. She's wet, cold, and pissed. It started raining on her while she was shovelling snow. We got about.. say 10 inches of snow. So I go out and finish the shovelling job as best I can but begin to notice the rain is making it very difficult.

I finish her car and get to mine. I clear off the car top, windows, etc and begin shovelling the back. I get about 3/4ths through before it really starts to freeze up. I myself am cold and figure I'll let it go.

Snow/freezing rain off and on all through that day.

I come out today to my car literally encased in solid ice. The snow became a sheet of ice. The slush? An icy barrier. I literally had to CHISEL my car out with a good screwdriver and hammer. I was literally cutting out ice blocks and 2 foot sheets of ice that were 2 inches thick. The ice blocks were about 10 inches thick. My stepdad is going over with a chainsaw and pickaxe now to finish the job.

6.... HOURS of that before I finally called it quit and got someone to pick me up. I've seen ice before, I've seen snow before, but never have I seen 10 inches of ice before. THAT, ladies and gentlemen, well and truly sucks.

So. What lesson did I learn? My emergency kit for my car will include more food for fuel, a craftsman screwdriver, craftsman hammer and a good pencil torch. Because seriously, an ice scraper isn't good enough. Or heck, maybe I'll just get an ice axe/hammer. Whatever can break that CONCRETE they call ice.

Greetings, Onboard the old USCGC icebreakers that I served on, we used wooden mallets and aluminum baseball bats to break the ice loose from bulkheads and decks. Using a screwdriver and hammer seems to me, will cause additional problems like using an icepick to defrost a freezer!!!

I have had this happen also. When I was in high school we had the ice storm of 98 and i was out of school for 30 days. The first night of the storm i stayed at a friend's house near my HS. I lived 20 miles away and the next morning my dad's S-10 was a block of ice. Nothing like yours but i couldn't get the door open. I didn't have any tools so i grabbed the door handle and literally ripped it off the door. I ended up chipping all the ice off around the doorjam and using a leatherman to pull the wire inside the door to open the door. After starting the truck and running the heater full blast i was able to drive home after letting it run for about an hour.

Yeah, that's more on par with what I've dealt with before. I've seen up to a half inch of ice coating things. Generally it will create an icy top layer on the snow and the rest below will stay soft. Then at the road surface it always ices up because it melts and refreezes overnight. But that's easy to deal with. ... This was the entire bulk of snow becoming one big popsicle. So you had a 10 inch ice lump which buried everything!

It's still a mess up here, I think they even declared a state of emergency because of it.

This reminds me of the common Yankee attitude about Southerners not being any good at winter driving. Thing is, the Yankees are used to having nice, dry snow to deal with, which is not a terribly tough problem. Down South, we get ice, and our "measly 3 inches of snow" often has ice underneath it or it gets compacted until it is practically ice. Much tougher driving problem.

HAve you tried getting one door open with a hair dryer, then just letting it run with the heat/ defront on for a few hours?

Something that should go in your vehicle kit is a spare wiper blade or refill. I ventured out to get lunch one day at work and my wipers were fine when I went in but when I came back out I hit the wipers and they moved but the rubber stayed put. I had to pull out the spare and replace it. I didn't think they would freeze up that fast.

OK.. now look at your BOB or your pocket survival kit and ask yourself how long you would last on foot,in the dark,
lost in that sort of storm.

Yep. In 82 we had about 6 inches of solid ice on the roads for 2 weeks. Half the state was closed down. Power lines were all on the ground, no power for 2 weeks. We got by just fine. My truck handled it fine - well, it DROVE fine, it didn't stop worth a crap. <img src="/images/graemlins/crazy.gif" alt="" />

As you use it, does the P mean "Pocket" or "Personal". If pocket, how big a pocket? And more the point, if just the pocket, why are you out in a storm like that without more gear? Thats like going out in the same thing wearing a hawiian shirt, bumuda shorts, and roman sandles.