Rubber freezing to glass? Whould'a thunk it!

[thewayne]

Russet warned me about this, and on a couple of occasions I've remembered to raise up my windshield wipers. Well, I didn't last night. This morning I'm getting ready to head to work and I walk around my car, checking that I don't have a lot of ice built-up in my wheel wells. As part of this I pulled up the passenger-side wiper and encounter a little resistance. Uh-oh. Go to the driver's side and it's frozen quite well onto the windshield, thenkyewveddymuch. So I guess I'll be buying a pair of blades on Friday and trying to be a little more mindful in the future.

The thing that I find curious is that my rear window wiper didn't show the least amount of being stuckedness, and it's more exposed to the elements than the windshield (we have covered parking for our two cars, I don't know why more people in our neighborhood don't).

Comments

[quasar273.livejournal.com]

I think it's the partly verticality of the rear window that provides the extra protection. The more horizontal front window a) gets colder because it radiates more heat to the sky (yeah, not so much of an issue with covered parking, but also...) b) is more likely to collect snow and snowmelt at the bottom of the window, where the wipers are. On the vertical rear window more of the snow and ice slides off.

There might also be an issue with the front window being warmer right after driving. It has further to cool down, therefore it accumulates more snowmelt which then turns into ice. The rear window was probably near freezing when you pulled in, since the rear defrost is usually only on for the first few minutes of a drive. Maybe this temperature thing is the more important issue for the case of covered parking with blowing snow, but I know the radiation issue is pretty important for plain old frost formation in uncovered parking.

[thewayne.livejournal.com]

Interesting, I wouldn't have thought of the radiation angle.

BTW, I popped up your windshield wipers before I left.