Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities

You might wait to turn wipers on

Rain and fog and misty September mornings are more than welcome on the desert Plains. You won’t find me complaining about the moisture, but you might find me voicing some disappointment about the specific circumstances of my pickup’s windshield.

A wet windshield isn’t too big of a problem if you are able to generally keep your glass relatively clean, but between the wet weather, there’s this odd tendency of dust and grit to accumulate.

I can’t imagine where or why the sand comes and sticks to my vehicle and dulls the gleaming paint that covers all the storied dents and dings. But alas, it seems to always arrive and if you’re like me, you just get used to it and rarely remember that your pickup can shine or your windshield can be clearer than the minimum that it takes to be able to usefully see.

And then comes the water from the sky to wash it away, right? Yes, but as you know, the longer you go without a rinse, the stronger the rain will have to be to rinse all the dirt off enough that you can see.

More often than is good, the mixture isn’t quite what it needs to be and the falling moisture just mixes with the dust and rather than running off, it stays right there and makes it darn near impossible to see.

It takes many years — probably because it takes quite a few examples of rain, and those are pretty far between — to learn to recognize and respond appropriately to the various mixtures of dirt and rain.

In most vehicles, tractor, pickup, car, or truck … your options are one of two choices when your windshield begins to resemble mud.

You can turn on the wipers or you can leave them off. And as we all have found out the hard way, what seems difficult to see through before you make the mistake of trying to wipe it off, is far worse if you preemptively activated the windshield wipers before there was enough water to actually move the dirt off.

So, know your proportions and be able to tell when to wipe and when to hold off — and when you get that figured out, I also recommend trying to remember how long it’s been since you replaced those wipers because that can throw all your calculation off.

Audra Brown needs new wipers, but not yet. Contact her at: [email protected]