Method of detecting and overcoming degradation of image quality during a weather event and activation of windshield wipers. The method takes a high-contrast region of interest (ROI) of an image captured by a camera of a vehicle vision system, applies a Laplacian Operator that focuses on the pixel level in the ROI, and calculates a variance of the Laplacian. Images having an ROI below a predetermined variance threshold are classified or flagged as a low-quality image. Once a low-quality image is flagged, the camera settings can be readjusted in a feedback loop to compensate for the loss in quality of the captured image. This method may be stored as a software routine and implemented by a vision control module of the vision system.