The Oklahoma Pre-Blizzard Vehicle Checklist

Surfing the TV last night, I'm pretty convinced the local Oklahoma news channels are pretty excited about this weekend's snowy forecast. They're practically wall-to-wall with weather coverage and any story that relates.

Driving the drama is straight out of chapter one in the media's guidebook, and boy are they really doing just that.

Nearly every news outlet has a different outlook and forecast. Anywhere from trace amounts of snow to a full-on blizzard dumping over a foot of powder can be found if you look around. The fact everyone shares hunches and predictions as fact on Facebook doesn't help.

Are we getting winter weather? Yep.

Is it going to be record-breaking? Meh. It's Oklahoma, I don't think anyone can realistically predict what is to happen. Could we break records? Absolutely, we could... But are we? Probably not.

The bigger concern aside from the chaos any amount of snow will cause is the ice. Now you may have watch every forecast and noticed there's not a lot of talk about ice at the moment, but with the plunging temperatures during this overtly-warm winter, all snow is going to become ice at some point throughout the weekend.

That's just the law of thermodynamics.

The warm earth will melt the snow. The melting snow will cool the surface below. With temps in the teens and windchill below zero, ice should be the real headline grabber with this storm.

While every ounce of common sense out there might whisper "Stay home," we know how uncommon this would be in today's society... but at least you can plan ahead and be ready for anything to come. Mainly, the general winter maintenance every vehicle needs, but due to our warm winter thus far, things that probably haven't been done yet.

Here's the checklist. Good luck.