SnowfallCheck

Do you need a snowblower in Bradley, IL?

The machine for a Bradley driveway

A shovel is enough

A normal winter drops about 2.7 tons of snow on this driveway in Bradley, 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 Bradley is light enough for one.

What a Bradley winter brings

Snow a year
21 in
Storms of 5 in or more
0.9 a winter
Storms of 10 in or more
almost never
Days with snow on the ground
35

Light, below most snowy cities. A typical snowy US city gets about 1.7 times as much. It tends to stay, so each storm lands on the last one.

On a two car driveway that is about 2.7 tons of snow to move in a season, and a 10 inch storm weighs 2,600 pounds.

When the snow comes in Bradley

  1. Nov0.6
  2. Dec5.3
  3. Jan8.1
  4. Feb3.4
  5. Mar3.0
  6. Apr0.3

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

Towns near Bradley

Bradley is number 181 of 225 Illinois towns here for snowfall; St. Charles gets the most at 46 inches.

TownMilesSnowTwo car, paved
Bourbonnais, IL227 inCordless single-stage
Kankakee, IL421 inA shovel is enough
Manhattan, IL1917 inA shovel is enough
Richton Park, IL2328 inCordless single-stage
Park Forest, IL2328 inCordless single-stage
Frankfort, IL2428 inCordless 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 Kankakee Metro Wastewater, 2.8 miles from Bradley. 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.