No one has ever woken up in the morning and said: “Boy, I hope there’s a thick layer of ice encrusted on my windshield today!” But on far too many frigid winter mornings, scraping snow and ice off of your car is an unavoidable chore if you plan to leave the property without a pair of snowshoes on your feet. Fortunately, we’re living in a golden age when it comes to ice scrapers and snow removal tools.

If your region sees limited snowfall but plenty of cold mornings, then a simple ice scraper is probably all you need. For moderate snowfall, a scrape that also features a brush is a good idea, as these devices allow you to remove the top layer of snow and then chisel away at the ice coating the windows. For areas that see huge volumes of snow, you might need a larger snow broom type of device that’s big enough to push around snow that has piled up many inches atop your car. 

In some cases, you will probably need a two-pronged approach to your automotive snow removal process, a large broom, brush, or pushing device to remove the snow, and a smaller, hard-edged scraper to deal with the ice. Here’s the good news: These things aren’t very expensive.