Do you need a snowblower in Bloomington, IL?
The machine for a Bloomington driveway
A shovel is enough
A normal winter drops about 0.8 tons of snow on this driveway in Bloomington, 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 Bloomington is light enough for one.
A normal Bloomington winter
- Snow a year
- 7 in
- Storms of 5 in or more
- 0.4 a winter
- Storms of 10 in or more
- almost never
- Days with snow on the ground
- 32
Light, below most snowy cities. A typical snowy US city gets about 5.0 times as much. It tends to stay, so each storm lands on the last one.
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 Bloomington
- Nov0.1
- Dec2.6
- Jan1.8
- Feb0.8
- Mar1.2
Snow worth clearing runs from December to March, heaviest in December. Buy the shovel before the first fall, when stores still have them.
Bloomington and its neighbours
Bloomington is number 223 of 225 Illinois towns here for snowfall; St. Charles gets the most at 46 inches.
| Town | Miles | Snow | Two car, paved |
|---|---|---|---|
| Normal, IL | 3 | 7 in | A shovel is enough |
| Morton, IL | 28 | 24 in | Cordless single-stage |
| Washington, IL | 29 | 24 in | Cordless single-stage |
| Lincoln, IL | 31 | 19 in | A shovel is enough |
| East Peoria, IL | 33 | 24 in | Cordless single-stage |
| Pontiac, IL | 33 | 25 in | Gas 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 Bloomington Wtr Wks, 2.1 miles from Bloomington. 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.