| I live in eastern Ontario Canada, and our winters vary from mild to extreme colds, sometimes going as low as -30. I built a large deck for my mother-in-law several years ago, and I used screws for the decking floor. To date, I have not seen any sign of broken or sheared screws, so maybe I'm just lucky. Even though I'm not contractor, I have built a few decks in my day for friends and relatives, always using screws. As far as I know, nobody has ever complained about the breaking of screws. I like the strong pull in power that screws provide, and I always use screws with a Robertson head (square head) which makes it easier to remove the screws should I need to replace a rotted floor board down the road. As most here have stated, this is only an opinion from a CanEHdian who lives in a 4 season environment.
While we're on the deck subject. Here's a little trick my late Uncle taught me when I was a kid, on how to prolong the life of a deck's frame. A lot of people when building a new deck don't realize that any rain that falls on the deck, also saturates the frame underneath it. Rain not only rots the floor boards, but the frame as well. In some cases the frame rots faster than the floor due to lack of sunshine which keeps the frame damp or moist which eventually turns to rot.. Many people have to rebuild the whole deck because of wood rot, but with this trick, all you'll have to replace are the floor boards once they've rotted. This will not only save you money, but also save you from rebuilding an entirely new frame every time the floor boards need replacing.
So, here's the trick, the next time you build a deck, once the frame is completed and you are ready to start installing the floorboards, do the following. Get yourself a roll of black felt roofing paper (which is about a 30" wide roll, designed to install on roofs prior to nailing asphalt singles...very inexpensive and can be found at any hardware or lumber yard).
Unroll the black felt roofing paper, and using a sharp utility knife, cut yourself strips 2½ to 3" wide x the length of each 2 x _ of wood that you used to build the frame of the deck (including cross pieces) They don't have to be cut perfectly straight, but try to keep the width to a minimum of 2½"
Place each cut strip on top of the 1½" wide wood frame, and staple them just enough to keep the wind from blowing them off. You should have about ½" of felt paper hanging off each side of your frame if you centered it properly on the 2 x_ . The idea here is that the felt paper acts as a miniature roof for each framed piece on top. Once this is done, you are ready to install your floor boards, steps etc.
Eventually, you'll have to replace the floor boards, or steps again, but, you'll notice when you remove the rotted floor boards, that the frame is as dry and solid as the day you built it. This means of course that you don't have to rebuild a whole new deck from the ground up again. Just replace rotted floor boards and you're good to go for another number of years and so on.
I've seen some deck frames that my Uncle built some 60 + years ago, and the frames of those projects are still standing and as strong and dry as the day he fbuilt them.
Anyway, I am thankful that he taught me that little trick, and I hope you find it as useful as I did. | 
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