Check Engine light & check hybrid system message

Hi Everyone,

I have a 2013 prius Four, not IV, & it was running smoothly all these days. It has 20K miles on it. I live in the east coast & was locked up the past 2 days due to the blizzard. The car was in my garage, so was not buried under the mountain of snow.

When i started it up this morning, i heard some shuddering sounds & when i was taking it out of the garage, it started showing me the "check the hybrid system, park @ a safe place" message along with the check engine light. I parked it outside & then took my other car to work. When i returned in the evening, tried starting to see if warming it up will reset the message, but that did not help either. I heard the shuddering sounds for ~ 10 seconds or so & the car ran on gas to warm up a bit but the message didnt go away.

Last winter (march) I had the car parked in the garage for a week as i was out of the country. So this didn't happen @ that time when it was not used for an extended time during winter. I did heard the shuddering sound either last winter (or) the winter before. I did mention it to the dealer during my checkup & they said they didnt see anything wrong.

Is there anything that i can do (or) should i just get the car towed to the nearest dealer & get it checked out?