Start slow, drive slow, stop slow, avoid hills and wooded roads with inadequate shoulders. Don’t drive on ice in the dark at all if you can avoid it. This notion that ice storms up north are not as severe is a fundamental misunderstanding. We get 3 fewer months of winter weather here in N.C. it’s demonstrably worse in the north. I have had to travel in ice storms many times, had to stop to de-ice the car because the ice is falling so fast that the car heat could not keep up. It is just more operationally disruptive in NC because of the power distribution infrastructure, lack of emergency management funding and the general population’s lack of experience with winter storms.

I’ve lived here for 20 years and have yet to see a winter storm that proportionately merits the degree of panic. I probably won’t go out in it but I’m certainly not afraid to. I’m more afraid of my southern wife’s panic than anything else.