2007 Ford F-150 - Cheap wipers

I know you get a lot more snow than us, this was the year I decided to get snowblower 2 so don’t think we get nothing, made it to work.

@oldtimer-11 - Interestingly, Mazda now uses a beam type blade for OEM. I live in snow country (near Rochester, NY) and I always buy beam blades for our snowy, icy winter weather. The OEM blades on my Mazda work perfectly here year round, so replacing the inserts is a great option. If your factory blades are not a beam type or hybrid blade then I guess you are stuck with aftermarket blades if you want to see in the winter.

Yeah Wisconsin borders Lake Michigan on the east and Lake Superior on the north, but prevailing winds probably help. Although Chicago seems to get lake effect weather on the same lake.

The other east? :wink:

I might have had my map upside down but Milwaukee seems to be east of everything else in Wisconsin. Then you go a few more blocks east and get your feet wet. East side of Wisconsin though, not the east side of Lake Michigan. Just like the north side of Wisconsin not the north side of lake Superior or you’d be in Canada.

I have pics where it is level with the roof of my house. We had one storm about 5 years ago that dumped 84" on one of the suburbs in 48 hours.

My son liver abour 60 miles south of Buffalo where they get between 200 to 300 inches a year. He had to rake his roof regularly in the winter so it would not collapse and a couple of times a winter he had to call in someone with a big plow to keep his driveway from getting so narrow that it would trap his car because his big two stage Toro could not get it over the snow banks on each side,

That is a lot of snow! I remember seeing old farm houses in ND with a door on the second floor, no porch or anything just a door. That was their snow exit in the winter time I heard.

I guess we normally get about 40-50" a year around here. I shouldn’t complain about the 4" I had this morning I guess. Only one time I remember the sides of the driveway were so high, I blew the snow straight up in the air and let the wind take it. Coming back from South Dakota once though, one area had a drift about 10+ feet high, single lane going through it. RWD and we were young, but still we had a child with us.

Semantics, no offence intended.

I recall seeing the same thing in parts of Canada.

I think it was in Ole Rovaag’s book “Giants in the Earth”, that talked about the winters on the prairie in South Dakota. Farmers would lose their way going from the house to the barn and freeze to death. They would string rope to follow so they wouldn’t get lost. Never had any snow blowers back then.

Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote about her father digging tunnels from the house to the barn.

We live in a beautiful place on a lake and we get 100 to 150 inches of snow most winters and we see our first flakes between November 1 and 15 and our last flakes around Mother’s Day. Being downwind of Lake Erie and Ontario means its cloudy almost every day. But when it snows it’s bright and beautiful no matter how cloudy. It’s a lifestyle. Snow blower, snow tires, downhill and cross country skis, snowshoes, snowmobiles, boots.

If you drive throug some section of Vermont, you are driving through steep valleys between broad topped hills. Take a road to the top of those hills and you will find farmhouses with outbuildings and sheds all connected to the barn so you can get to all of the buildings without going outside.

In the winter of 72 I was regularly driving from Buffalo to Montreal via Watertown and Chateaugay and Malone NY. The snow was so deep that peoples cars were hopelessly buried and they had snowmobiles parked outside their second story windows There was a 30 mile stretch where the snowbanks were taller than our trucks and they had to keep Route 11 open with payloaders and dump trucks. A bunch of us were snowed in for 3 days in a restaurant above Watertown Mostly truckers and a few State Police.

The restaurant ran out of food the third day and the State Police commandeered a load of frozen pies, so we lived on pie and coffee the third day. When I got to that restaurant, it was 31F below zero and the wind was a steady 50 mph. It was snowing so hard that if you stuck a snow shovel into it and threw it, you could not see where you had taken it from.

No cell phones or CBs in those days. I always carried a thick wool blanket with me.

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CB radios were widespread back then. I got my first one before I was old enough to drive, around 1970. But I’ll bet there wasn’t much chatter during that storm in that location.

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Freight Company drivers did not adopt them en mass until the National 55 speed limit. The trucking companies resisted them fiercely, threatening drivers wit being fired if caught with one. Most companies, you got a different tractor every trip. There were no electrical hookups and the trucks had no radio or speakers of any kind. To have a CB you had to buy one, put it in a box with speakers, weld a mounting plate to a large vise grip and if you were going to do that you might as well put an am/fm radio and antenna. The vice grip clamped on the mirror brackets
(painted) and made the brackets rust , for power you had to open up the fuse box and have alligator clips on your power cords.

Then all you had to do was to get all that gear out to the truck and get out of the yard without anyone in management seeing you. You would have to hide this gear any time you went into a terminal or when you returned home. It took yeaqrs before the Class 1 common carriers stopped trying to fire drivers over CBs. Iy was the owner operators who were the early adopters.

Interesting!

I was thinking of non-truckers. Lots of them already had them by 1972. I remember that it was difficult to get a word in edgewise on channel 19, but I lived in a highly populated part of NYS at the time.

I never had one but I think maybe the usefulness is coming back. Had a couple guys at work that were big users and they kind of huffed and puffed one day about needing a license to talk. I said no problem and pulled out my license from 1970 from ground school. I suppose it’s no good anymore but they never sent a renewal notice.

My recollection is originally a license was required, and I got one, but the requirement was dropped.

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I had a Tech No Code ham radio license for many years. Sadly, due to a mix up a few years ago when I thought I had renewed it online, including paying the renewal fee, the renewal didn’t properly process. And at this point I’ll have to retest to get get back a ham license.

The Tech No Code class license has been eliminated so if I do bother to retest I’ll have to decide between Novice or General class.

It will take a LOT of study before I could pass the technical part of the test. It took me two tries when I first got my license. Physics and electronics are tough for me to learn. But I did ace the legalities and procedures part easily.

I used to always pull the ham radio head unit out of the car when I took the car in for service so that no one could try using it. I didn’t want it damaged or the settings messed up and I certainly didn’t want my ham license in jeopardy due to unauthorized use!

Most people assumed I had a CB radio and when I told them no, it was a licensed amateur radio they had either never heard of ham radio or would say that women couldn’t have a ham license. Uhm noooo, anyone can get a ham license if they pass the test.

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