Last winter saw some of the coldest weather that we have seen for many years, for a period of a few weeks where the temperatures in some places never got above zero. Although these a few weekswere over the xmas holiday and the government recommended people not to make any unnecessary driving, many people had to work, and see family, and also make sure they had all the gifts and food for festivities. For much of this period the main roads were kept clear by frequent gritting and clearing by snow ploughs, which then meant people could make journeys safely as long as they were careful.

I was one of the people who had to travel by automobile a frequent basis, as I live about 15 miles away from where I work, and as I worked for a supermarket it was essential that I turned up to work at this busiest time of year. The first day’s trip took me an additional hour and 30 minutes to get to work, and I typically manage to do it in only 20 minutes. The first day was so bad because I had to stop and help dig out a couple of people who had got stuck in the snow and were blocking the roads. Luckly for them, I live in a hilly part of the country and had packed a spade in the tuck of my automobile along with some boots and some warm clothing. I had done this mainly because I did not leave work until 10 PM and I knew that if more snow came down in the evening it would not get cleared, and this would make it very difficult to get up the hill to my house.

After a few days or so of this I noticed that my wiper blades had began to split and I kept finding that the ice was collecting on the wiper blade frames overnight. This meant that in the morning I had to remove the ice from the frames so that the wiper blades could follow the curves of the front window, which got frustrating some after a while. At least the overnight covering of snow could be brushed off easily and the remaining ice could be cleared with de-icer and a quick wipe of the front window wipers if they had not frozen up. As the stores were not yet closed for xmas, I decided to pop round the automobile maintenance stores and get some replacement wiper blades before work. When I got there it looked like I was not the only person who had had their wiper blade problems as there were a couple empty spaces on the replacement wiper blades stand. I looked at the size of the wiper blades that I needed and then inspected the stand and there were none left in the cheap part of the stand, so I looked in the more costly part and there were a couple of replacement wiper blades in that stand which were the right size. They were flat wiper blades made from silicone, they were dear but they could operate in temperatures as low as -60 BC and were resistant to UV exposure, ozone, salt and came with a 1 year guarantee. I thought I would give these flat wiper blades made from silicone a go as the flat wiper blades have a frameless design, so I would not have the problem of the frames icing up and not following the curves of the front window. I fitted the flat wiper blades to my automobile in the car park and set off to work and I instantly noticed the difference, as they were clearing the snow on the front window extremely effectively. I’m still using these wiper blades eight months later and they are still clearing my front window extremely effectively.