SnowfallCheck

Do you need a snowblower in Bonney Lake, WA?

The machine for a Bonney Lake driveway

A shovel is enough

A normal winter drops about 0.7 tons of snow on this driveway in Bonney Lake, 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 Bonney Lake is light enough for one.

What a Bonney Lake winter brings

Snow a year
6 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
5

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 Bonney Lake waiting a day is often a real option.

On a two car driveway that is about 0.7 tons of snow to move in a season, and a 10 inch storm weighs 2,600 pounds.

When the snow comes in Bonney Lake

  1. Nov1.5
  2. Dec1.5
  3. Jan1.5
  4. Feb0.5
  5. Mar0.6

Snow worth clearing runs from November to January, heaviest in November. Buy the shovel before the first fall, when stores still have them.

Bonney Lake and its neighbours

Bonney Lake is number 34 of 91 Washington towns here for snowfall; Spokane gets the most at 45 inches.

TownMilesSnowTwo car, paved
Sumner, WA46 inA shovel is enough
Edgewood, WA66 inA shovel is enough
Puyallup, WA66 inA shovel is enough
Auburn, WA86 inA shovel is enough
Enumclaw, WA84 inA shovel is enough
Fife, WA96 inA 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 Mcmillin Rsvr, 6.2 miles from Bonney Lake. 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.