The door is frozen to the ground
This is the New England call. Nothing is broken yet — and whether anything breaks in the next thirty seconds depends entirely on what you do with the button.
Call before forcing itLicensed technicians · no obligationHow it happens
Snow and brine come off the car and melt on a slab that is warmer than the air. The water runs to the lowest line in the floor, which is the threshold, and sits under the rubber seal. Overnight the temperature drops and that film freezes, bonding the seal to the concrete across the whole width of the door.
A seal in good condition makes this worse, not better, because it sits flush and holds the water where it is.
What not to do
Do not hold the button. The opener does not know the door is stuck. It pulls, and the force has to go somewhere: a stripped drive gear, a cable jumping off its drum, a bent top panel, or the bottom section torn away from the seal. A thirty-dollar problem becomes a several-hundred-dollar one in one press.
Most openers will reverse or trip their overload, which is the machine protecting itself. Taking that as an invitation to try again is how the damage happens.
Do not pry at the panel. The bottom section is thin and it bends. Levering under it with a shovel or a bar deforms the panel and the seal retainer, and neither returns to shape.
Do not use boiling water. It frees the door and then runs straight back to the same place and freezes harder, often now inside the seal channel. Thermal shock on cold concrete is its own problem.
What usually works
Break the bond, do not pull it. Warm water — warm, not boiling — along the bottom edge, or a hair dryer or heat gun kept moving, will release the seal in a few minutes. Work from one end to the other rather than trying to free the whole width at once.
Then clear what you freed. If the water simply stays there it refreezes by evening. Push the meltwater away from the threshold and out of the garage before closing up.
Lift by hand first. Pull the release cord and try the door by hand before trusting it to the opener again. If it comes up freely the bond is gone; if it still resists, there is ice left.
Stopping it coming back
Check the seal. A cracked or flattened bottom seal holds water against the slab instead of shedding it, and it is an inexpensive part. Replacing it before December is worth more than any amount of thawing in January.
Keep the threshold clear. Shovel and sweep the strip of concrete the door sits on, rather than only the driveway. That is where the problem forms.
Mind where the car drips. Parking a snow-covered car well inside the garage rather than nose-to-the-door keeps the meltwater away from the threshold.
Silicone, not oil, on the seal. A silicone spray on the rubber keeps it from bonding and does not attack the material the way petroleum products do.