Also I moved into an area where there is less snow, but when we get it it almost always starts as rain… Then snow… Which melts on the pavement… And eventually the pavement hits zero and all that water turns to ice.

Now you have snow on ice, which is awful.

Where I grew up is exactly how you described it though. Generally fresh snow is fine if the road was previously plowed / treated with gravel or deicer / salt.

My mom would also suggest a heavy blanket, and maybe a candle / matches / lighter. But the candle could cause a fire if you aren’t careful.

When I built my home server this is what I did with all VMs. Learned how to change the start up delay time in esxi and ensured everything came back online with no issues from a cold built.

Rip VMware.