When the episode was being written, many writers' contracts had just expired, so there was a small number of writers at the annual story retreat. Al Jean was very nervous about how they could write a whole new season with such a small crew. In addition, there were several scenes added after the animatic, making the schedule even tighter. However, Jon Vitti was very committed to this episode and pitched almost the entire plot by himself. Vitti's inspiration for the episode was when he noticed that very few TV shows portray snow outside of Thanksgiving or Christmas, so he wanted to do an episode with snow involved. From this idea he developed the "friends in competition with each other" plot, which led to Homer getting the plow from a car show.