Do you need a snowblower in Ashland, KY?
The machine for a Ashland driveway
A shovel is enough
A normal winter drops about 0.8 tons of snow on this driveway in Ashland, spread over a few light falls. That is shovel work.
Get a wide plastic shovel with a bent handle before the first fall, and if you have a bad back, consider a cordless single-stage instead: the snow in Ashland is light enough for one.
A normal Ashland winter
- Snow a year
- 6 in
- Storms of 5 in or more
- 0.2 a winter
- Storms of 10 in or more
- almost never
- Days with snow on the ground
- 6
Light, below most snowy cities. A typical snowy US city gets about 5.0 times as much. Most of it melts within a few days, so in Ashland waiting a day is often a real option.
On a two car driveway that is about 0.8 tons of snow to move in a season, and a 10 inch storm weighs 2,600 pounds.
When the snow comes in Ashland
- Nov0.1
- Dec0.9
- Jan3.2
- Feb1.2
- Mar0.8
Snow worth clearing runs from January to February, heaviest in January. Buy the shovel before the first fall, when stores still have them.
Towns near Ashland
Ashland is number 30 of 42 Kentucky towns here for snowfall; Covington gets the most at 23 inches.
| Town | Miles | Snow | Two car, paved |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ironton, OH | 5 | 6 in | A shovel is enough |
| Huntington, WV | 12 | 10 in | A shovel is enough |
| Portsmouth, OH | 26 | 7 in | A shovel is enough |
| St. Albans, WV | 45 | 11 in | A shovel is enough |
| South Charleston, WV | 51 | 32 in | Cordless single-stage |
| Charleston, WV | 55 | 32 in | Cordless single-stage |
Where these numbers come from
Read next: What a winter of snow weighs and Why storm depth matters more than snowfall.
NOAA 1991 to 2020 climate normals from S Pt, 3.7 miles from Ashland. A normal winter, not this winter's forecast. Snow is weighed at 6.24 pounds a cubic foot, fresh and fairly dry; wet spring snow can weigh three times that.
- Days with snow on the ground come from a second nearby station, because the closest one does not record snow depth.