Extreme Weather and Your Car

Extreme Weather. Winter is working her way across our country with predictably unpredictable surges of warmth and chill. Sea coast dwellers, orchard planters, and unseasonably warm Albertans will tell you that there are some strange things happening with the weather.

How does extreme weather impact us and our cars?

In more ways than you’d think!

MarketPlace (One California drought winner? The local car wash. By Lauren Sommer) notes that in some parts of drought-riddled California washing your car on the driveway with potable water is right out. This may be a boon for the local car detailers, however! Some car washes use recycled water. Your car can be made spit-polish-shiny using less water than it takes to run your dishwasher.

News.com.au reports on “Global Weirding”. A playful perplexed shake of the head to the heat wave that is stifling Australia. There, temps are 14 degrees above average. Trove digitized newspaper, noted,

During the terrific heat wave which many parts of Australia experienced, probably little thought was given to the huge saving inhuman and animal exertion, made possible by the use of motor vehicles during the intense fight against heat and bush fires.

We are prone to accept the modern motor vehicle as an ordinary part of present-day life, as if it had been with us for ages. And we overlook the fact that from a humanitarian point of view, a tremendous amount of suffering and hard work is nowadays spared the quadrupeds which motorised units have replaced.

We tax our vehicles by insisting that they keep us warm when the weather dips below zero…even well below zero. Not only that, we need them to move us with superhero speed and agility from the path of storms and forest fires. We need them to withstand extremes of heat and water and even sandstorms. When the weather gets bossy, our four wheeled wonders provide shelter, rescue, and escape!

India Copes With Extreme Weather | Profiting From Flood Cars

Canadians who have experienced the creeping sludge of flood waters know what this is about! A short-circuited electrical system in a river-soaked car is the end of a vehicle. India isn’t quite so quick to write their flood units off.

Check out, “India’s ‘dead’ car auctions: where you can get a Porsche for $7000 (By Soutik Biswas). It tells a story of resourcefulness and hard work. Vehicles that might otherwise be destined for the scrap heap are repaired, re-sold, and put to good use after flood waters threatened to end their serviceable use.