With another wintry blast of ice and maybe snow, we have to decide on windshield wiper placement. We went through this a week or two ago when this area had a lot of snow. The night before the question was, "should we raise our wipers to keep them from freezing in place." We did.
The same question will come up today as the afternoon forecast is for rain, freezing rain, ice and snow. If you raise the wipers before the storm they won't freeze onto the windshield with less chance of the rubber being torn. And, if snow and ice needs scraping off the window, up wipers are out of the way.
Leaving them down is ok, if you plan to let the motor run and warm the car before leaving. You'd hope the defroster would melt the ice and snow on the window.
The choice is kind of a personal one and much will depend on the amount of snow/ice is predicted. After our big snow two weeks ago I found getting the snow and ice off the windshield was an enormous, frustrating piece of work. The snow was heavy with ice underneath. When I got as much as I could off, then running the motor for heat, I still could not lower the raised wipers. They were so frozen in the up position I about gave up after trying one thing or another to unfreeze them.
So today I may leave them down or maybe not. Winter. What can you do?