Do you need a snowblower in Boise City, ID?
The machine for a Boise City driveway
A shovel is enough
A normal winter drops about 2.3 tons of snow on this driveway in Boise City, 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 Boise City is light enough for one.
What a Boise City winter brings
- Snow a year
- 18 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
- 17
Light, below most snowy cities. A typical snowy US city gets about 2.0 times as much. It tends to stay, so each storm lands on the last one.
On a two car driveway that is about 2.3 tons of snow to move in a season, and a 10 inch storm weighs 2,600 pounds.
When the snow comes in Boise City
- Oct0.1
- Nov2.0
- Dec5.6
- Jan5.3
- Feb3.3
- Mar1.2
- Apr0.1
Snow worth clearing runs from November to March, heaviest in December. Buy the shovel before the first fall, when stores still have them.
Boise City and its neighbours
Boise City is number 18 of 26 Idaho towns here for snowfall; Rexburg gets the most at 70 inches.
| Town | Miles | Snow | Two car, paved |
|---|---|---|---|
| Garden City, ID | 6 | 18 in | A shovel is enough |
| Meridian, ID | 9 | 18 in | A shovel is enough |
| Kuna, ID | 10 | 18 in | A shovel is enough |
| Eagle, ID | 11 | 18 in | A shovel is enough |
| Star, ID | 15 | 10 in | A shovel is enough |
| Nampa, ID | 17 | 10 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 Boise Air Terminal, 2.2 miles from Boise City. 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.