From the NY Post:
Pickle juice and cooking spray: Which snow and ice hacks actually work — and which ones don’t
Don’t freeze up when it comes to snow removal this winter.
Fortunately, experts have recently sounded off on the tips and tricks that will make deicing and shoveling a little less burdensome when the temperatures dip below freezing.
Here’s which hacks to try and which to avoid this winter when frozen precipitation piles up.
Juice it up
Believe it or not, one way to quickly de-ice objects like a windshield is the application of pickle juice.
Pickle juice is a salt brine. That alone will melt ice. But it also contains sugar, lactic acid, and acetic acid, which will rust your car, destroy your paint, and leave a sticky mess.
Not a pickle fan? Try rubbing alcohol
Numerous news outlets suggest mixing hot or boiling water, dish soap and rubbing alcohol to clear icy steps and sidewalks, with the alcohol being the magic portion of the elixir since it has a lower freezing point than water.
Be warned, though: While some hack testers claim their treated surfaces did not refreeze, others did not have the same luck.
The rubbing alcohol is the only part of that recipe that keeps the ice from forming.
First aid grade alcohol is expensive.
Why not do what normal people do and make sure you have a bag of deicing salt and a bottle of windshield defroster spray on hand?
Total cost, maybe $10.
And that stuff is engineered to do the job properly without destroying your paint.
But apparently being prepared in advance for winter weather, instead of trying to hack it with what you have in your kitchen, is an alien concept to New Yorkers.
I thank God I’m a Florida boy.
I was raised on hurricanes.
Being prepared for extreme weather is just a way of life for me.
Just adding to my list of reasons New Yorkers suck.
I don’t have that problem, ya’ know living on the Gulf coast. We did have nasty rainy sleet couple of nights ago but nothing to brag about.
It’s kind of like living as a born and bred Midwesterner living in the land of St. Nick Saban. The city/county goes, “Well, we planned and treated for snow. We got ice. You’re on your own, folks!” So the whole county is shut down for a week and me and my Minnesotan buddy are going, “Us and 4 of our redneck buddies could have cleared this place up with a skid steer, a plow truck, and a couple cases of High Life!”
.
As blessed as I am for my life experience, I can’t help but look around and go all Cleavon Little. “Baby, you are so talented . . . and they are so dumb!”
New Yorkers are stupid… Meanwhile. 20 miles from where I’m sitting 30″ of snow fell yesterday…
and remember kids- when you are pouring pickle juice on your windshield, it will run down into the air intake for your heater… THAT will smell nice when it warms up…
you can’t fix stupid and numbing it with a stick just makes you tired
Remember that the New York Post is written by and for people in New York City and its immediate area.
The people who live in the rest of New York State aren’t like that, except of course for the transplants from the NYC area. We keep plenty of rock salt available in case of snow or ice. We have scrapers in out cars. We know to start the car early so it can warm up. We often change our windshield washing fluid to one that melts ice.
You can always identify the NYC transplants because they recoil at the thought of their neighbors owning guns, complain about the smell of manure on farm fields in the spring, and complain about the sound of gunfire during hunting season in the fall.
Read an early 20th century story called The Machine Stops. It’s online, not too long. It’s prophetic.
Hey, let’s be green – use a battery powered blow dryer to clear off that winshield! (Bonus: get a free lesson of what “coefficient of thermal expansion” means!)
LOL, hot water? Nice cracked windshield you have!
LOL, cooking spray? Nice greasy smear you have to look through!
Having grown up in the Metro NYC area, I can assure you this level if idiocy is a relatively recent phenomenon.
First of all, snow out on the Island was not unusual. We got a few snowfalls every year, and some years it was a LOT of snow. We shoveled, snowblowed, had chains in the car, all season tires, etc… If there was ice on the window, you scraped it off, and ran the defroster.
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Anyone who looked to the morons in the news for advice got what they deserved. A broken windshield, a rusty car, etc…
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But, these days, the stupid appears to be strong in NY.
Here in Central Oregon it snows all the time so smart people have snow tires scrapers and a clue. I use pink RV antifreeze in spray bottle but have discovered it’s less magical below 25 degrees. Of the recently arrived Californians and Portlanders get caught out and spin their Teslas into snow banks. I grew up in the NYC suburbs and we certainly knew how to handle ice as the inevitable successor.