RALEIGH, NC - JANUARY 17: A vehicle passes a snow plow as it moves along Wade Avenue during a snow ... [+] storm on January 17, 2018 in Raleigh, North Carolina. North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper declared a state of emergency yesterday ahead of the winter storm. (Photo by Lance King/Getty Images)

We don’t get much snow here in the south, so each winter storm is a special—if not harrowing—event. No matter how many storms we endure, though, it never seems to get any easier. Here are five tips to help you get through any storm that rolls our way.

What a heartbreaking sight it is to watch your neighbors attempt to clear away the snow by taking a broom to the roof of the car. I’ve seen it all over the course of 12 winters in central North Carolina. Brooms, dustpans, cardboard boxes, magazines, junk mail, oven mitts, arms, legs, you name it.

A snowbrush, preferably one that doubles as an ice scraper, is as important a tool to have in your car as a tire pressure gauge or jumper cables.

Leaving snow or ice on your car is a recipe for disaster. Countless wintertime wrecks are instigated by snow and ice flying off of one car and slamming into another. It’s an entirely preventable ordeal that causes injuries and fatalities every year.

Spring the ten or twenty bucks and treat yourself to a good snowbrush and ice scraper the next time you’re in the store. It’s a worthwhile investment to keep you and your fellow drivers safe.

The warm air that keeps us temperate in the winter also messes with our winter storms. It’s somewhat rare around here to get a storm that’s purely snow from start to finish. There’s usually a layer of warm air lurking not far above the surface that turns our snow into an icy mess.

Sleet and freezing rain can turn a fun snowfall into a bad experience in a flash. Sleet, or ice pellets, are basically frozen raindrops that reach the ground with a high-pitched ‘tink’. Freezing rain is liquid rain that falls when temperatures are below freezing, freezing on contact with any exposed surfaces.

It’s sometimes really hard to pinpoint where the dividing line between snow and ice will fall. The history of southern winters is littered with once-promising snowstorms that turned into a sad, icy disaster in a hurry.

Sleet is ugly. Sleet accumulates like snow when enough of it falls. But if you don’t remove it from roads and driveways within a few hours of falling, sleet tends to freeze into a solid sheet of ice.

This glacial ice, so to speak, is practically immovable and virtually impossible to drive or walk on. Plenty of people have gotten stuck at home when several inches of solidified sleet entombed their towns. Don’t get overconfident and try to forge ahead when the roads are covered in sleet. It isn’t the same as snow.

It’s a long-running joke that the south falls apart at the first sight of a snowflake. There’s a good reason we can’t handle tiny amounts of snow down here. First off, we don’t have the plentiful snow removal and road treatment equipment that communities up north have. Second, our issues loop back to those warmer temperatures.

Temperatures are usually above or hovering around freezing when most winter storms start. That first burst of snow falls on our roads and melts on contact. Then, as temperatures drop, that water begins to freeze and snow starts to accumulate. Hot traffic melts that fresh layer of snow, thickening the layer of ice covering the roads. Before you know it, most of our major thoroughfares are ice-covered nightmares that lead to long-lasting traffic snarls.

Losing grip on a slick surface can injure more than your pride. There’s a trick to walking on ice if you can’t avoid it—just walk like a penguin! No, really.

Think about how you normally walk: heel, toe, heel, toe. That puts all of your weight on one tiny surface of your foot, leaving you vulnerable to slipping and falling. If you walk like a penguin instead—taking one flat-footed step after another—you’re distributing your weight over a wider area and leaving yourself less vulnerable to slipping. 

If you don’t want to bother waddling around, walking on the grass can give you some extra traction to help you get safely to where you’re going.