Do you need a snowblower in Bellingham, WA?
What clears snow in Bellingham
A shovel is enough
A normal winter drops about 0.4 tons of snow on this driveway in Bellingham, 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 Bellingham is light enough for one.
A normal Bellingham winter
- Snow a year
- 3 in
- Storms of 5 in or more
- 0.1 a winter
- Storms of 10 in or more
- almost never
- Days with snow on the ground
- 3
Light, below most snowy cities. A typical snowy US city gets about 10.0 times as much. Most of it melts within a few days, so in Bellingham waiting a day is often a real option.
On a two car driveway that is about 0.4 tons of snow to move in a season, and a 10 inch storm weighs 2,600 pounds.
When the snow comes in Bellingham
- Oct0.1
- Nov0.8
- Dec0.3
- Jan1.1
- Feb0.6
- Mar0.5
Inches of new snow per month, averaged over 1991 to 2020.
Towns near Bellingham
Bellingham is number 66 of 91 Washington towns here for snowfall; Spokane gets the most at 45 inches.
| Town | Miles | Snow | Two car, paved |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ferndale, WA | 9 | 3 in | A shovel is enough |
| Lynden, WA | 14 | 11 in | A shovel is enough |
| Anacortes, WA | 20 | 5 in | A shovel is enough |
| Sedro-Woolley, WA | 20 | 6 in | A shovel is enough |
| Burlington, WA | 21 | 6 in | A shovel is enough |
| Mount Vernon, WA | 24 | 6 in | A shovel is enough |
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 Bellingham 3 SSW, 3.1 miles from Bellingham. 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.