As snow and ice comes our way, it is time once again to consider a thorny seasonal question: When a winter storm is coming, do you park your car outdoors with windshield wipers up or do you leave them down?
I have written about this cold-weather quandary many times. The article have generated debate (so to speak) on both sides.
When I wrote about it in 2024, Waynne Cram, at the time service manager at Concord Nissan, said he was “a big fan of wipers up” because “That keeps the rubber from freezing to the glass.”
And what’s wrong with that? If you left the wipers running when you turned off the car the night before, or you turn them on as soon as you start the car, you can damage the wiper motor.
“People get in their car, they fire it up, the wipers are on … they try to move but can’t. The linkage arm, the nut and bolt that hold it together, will start to back-thread,” he said.
Or maybe worse: One Monitor editor’s child recently had a wiper break in half due to this very scenario.
The big drawback about leaving wipers in the up position is that it can weaken the spring that holds the blade firmly against the glass, so the wipers will do a worse job of clearing the windshield.
The don’t-put-wipers-up crowd lists several other concerns, including fear that hooligans won’t be able to resist breaking them off; fear that they’ll get damaged because ice gets packed around the exposed housing; and fear that leaving them up looks dorky (which, admittedly, it does).