It’s cold, the snow is wet and the last thing you want to do is to walk around your car, truck or SUV, the frigid wind in your face, as you brush the snow from you car in your McHenry driveway. But this is Illinois. If you don’t clear your windows, you can get a ticket. If you drive over the border into Wisconsin, you can even get an ‘Ice Missile Law’ ticket – a law designed to ensure pieces of snow don’t blow off your car and damage other vehicles or obscure the vision of other drivers.

Let’s accept the idea that you should clean the snow from your vehicle before heading out onto and beyond those McHenry roads. Having arrived at this conclusion, what is the best way to clean the snow from your car, truck or SUV?

The first question is whether you care about the finish of your vehicle. If you have an older vehicle and aren’t that worried about scratches in the paint, get out a push broom and have at it. But if you have a newer, or a nicer older car, truck or SUV, the push broom is likely to scratch the paint. In some cases, the scratches will be faint enough that you hardly notice them. Then, one day, the sunlight hits your vehicle just right and you’re aghast: “LOOK AT ALL THOSE SCRATCHES!”

If you care about your vehicle’s finish, you want to avoid using: 

• a brush
• a broom
• a shovel 
• your arm

Well, you can use them – carefully – on the outer layers of snow. But keep in mind that, if your brush, broom, shovel or your arm touches the surface of your vehicle’s paint, scratches are almost inevitable. 

You also want to take care not to lean up against your vehicle while clearing away the snow. Belt buckles and coat zippers can leave nasty scratches on your car, truck or SUV’s paint.

Get out the Leaf Blower to clean away that snow

A leaf blower is really the ticket for removing snow from your vehicle without scratching the surface. With a soft, fluffy snow, the leaf blower will do wonders.

Of course, not all snowfalls in McHenry are soft and fluffy. Some are heavy and wet. Unless you have a really powerful leaf blower, it may not have the umph to remove the snow from your car, truck or SUV. In these cases, you’re forced to resort to carefully using the other tools mentioned above to get the outer layers off your vehicle. Or you may want to lift off blocks of snow by hand. When you have the majority of the snow cleared away, finish off that final layer with your leaf blower.