Exclusive | Beware these most common winter injuries, including what you should never do with a snow blower

Oh, the weather outside is frightful — and not needing a trip to the ER would be delightful.Unfortunately, plenty of people end up in the hospital every year due to winter-related injuries, some serious enough to require surgery.Dr.Nicole M.

Stevens, an orthopedic trauma surgeon at NYU Langone, is warning about the most common threats and what you can do to avoid getting hurt.“Slips and falls are very common, especially after the first snowfall or ice storm of the year when it kind of freezes over.And the biggest injury I see from that is ankle fractures or ankle sprains,” Dr.

Stevens told The Post.Those falls can happen to people of any age — and can occur anywhere.In cities where people do a lot of walking, there’s plenty of opportunity to hit a slippery patch and go flying.“The metal grates are a surprisingly slippery place to fall, like those subway grates, so I would watch out for those,” she warned.In the suburbs, people are likely to lose their footing in their driveways, getting to or out of their cars.And the doc cautioned that just because it’s not snowy doesn’t mean there’s no threat you’ll land on your butt.“When there’s snow on the ground, people are cognizant about it.

But when it’s wet and cold and there’s more of that black ice or slushy ice, people don’t recognize can be pretty slippery.”To make your steps a bit more careful, she recommends wearing shoes with grippy rubber soles, since flat soles can be extra slick against the ground.Even if you’re on the ice on purpose, you can still get hurt — and Dr.Stevens has seen her shared of ice skating injuries.“If you go ice skating at Bryant Park or something like that, and you’re not a typical ice skater, people can fall and have wrist injuries,” she said.

“That’s another one that we see commonly when it starts to get cold out.”Though she hasn’t seen a lot of sledding injuries, she recommends that if you do go sledding, you make sure your path is ...