About SnowfallCheck

Why this exists

Snowblowers are sold on fear. Every November the same flyer goes out to a town that gets two light snows a winter and to one that gets buried every week. The honest answer to "do I need one" depends on three things: how much snow your town gets, how deep a single storm usually gets, and the size and surface of the driveway you clear. SnowfallCheck puts those together for 3,206 US towns of ten thousand people or more, and says which tool fits, from nothing at all to a two-stage machine.

Where the numbers come from

Snow figures are the NOAA NCEI 1991-2020 U.S. Climate Normals at the weather station nearest each town (1,525 stations in all): average snowfall by month, and the number of days a year with at least 1, 3, 5 and 10 inches of new snow, and with snow lying on the ground. Where the nearest station does not record snow on the ground, that count comes from the next nearest one that does (333 towns). Town locations and populations come from the Census Bureau's Gazetteer and population estimates.

How the verdict is reached

A winter's snow is turned into weight on the driveway, at about 6.24 pounds per cubic foot of fresh snow (the National Weather Service's ten inches of snow to one of water). A two car driveway is taken as 500 square feet with the walk, a one car as 300, a long one as 900 and a rural lane as 1,400.

Then, in order: under 3 inches a year needs nothing. Ten-inch storms on 0.5 days a winter or more (one every other winter), or 64 inches a year or more, needs a two-stage machine, because single-stage intakes choke above about 8 inches. Under 3 tons a winter on the driveway is shovel work. Under 12 tons, with fewer than 1.5 five-inch days and under 0.3 ten-inch days, a cordless single-stage fits. Anything between is a gas single-stage. A gravel drive moves any single-stage answer to two-stage, because a single-stage auger scrapes the ground and throws stones. Someone who cannot shovel moves up from a shovel to a cordless machine, and from a two-stage machine to hiring help.

What the data shows

For a paved two car driveway, 1,269 of the 3,206 towns (40%) need nothing, 706 (22%) need only a shovel, and 1,231 (38%) are machine towns, 319 of them two-stage. Make that driveway gravel and 1,231 towns land on two-stage. The snowiest is Truckee, CA, at 207 inches a year. Snowfall alone can mislead: Hibbing, MN gets 60 inches a year, yet it comes in shallow falls, and the verdict there is cordless single-stage.

Known limits

Climate normals describe a typical winter, not a record one, and the biggest storm of a decade is not in them. Several towns share a weather station, so their figures match even where the towns differ. Where the two nearest stations sit at very different elevations, the town page says so (69 towns), because hills nearby can get far more or less snow. Driveway sizes are typical presets, not your measurements, and the machine prices are typical retail ranges, not quotes. Plow ridges at the end of the driveway, heavy wet coastal snow and drifting on open ground all make clearing harder than the totals suggest.

Corrections

If a town's figures look wrong, say so through the contact page. Confirmed errors are fixed in the data or the model, which corrects every page that depends on it at once.

Who runs this

SnowfallCheck is independently run. It is not affiliated with any snowblower maker, retailer, snow removal company or government agency, and nobody pays to change a town's verdict.

Written by

Each town page is generated by AI software from the cited NOAA climate normals and Census place data, and no journalist or editor reviews a page before it publishes. The snowfall, storm counts, weights and verdicts come from that data and the rules above, not from AI; the AI only assembles the sentences around them.