Do you need a snowblower in Bristol, TN?
Your answer for Bristol
A shovel is enough
A normal winter drops about 1.2 tons of snow on this driveway in Bristol, 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 Bristol is light enough for one.
What a Bristol winter brings
- Snow a year
- 9 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
- 7
Light, below most snowy cities. A typical snowy US city gets about 3.3 times as much. Most of it melts within a few days, so in Bristol waiting a day is often a real option.
On a two car driveway that is about 1.2 tons of snow to move in a season, and a 10 inch storm weighs 2,600 pounds.
When the snow comes in Bristol
- Nov0.3
- Dec1.7
- Jan3.0
- Feb3.0
- Mar1.1
- Apr0.1
Snow worth clearing runs from December to March, heaviest in January. Buy the shovel before the first fall, when stores still have them.
Bristol and its neighbours
Bristol is number 2 of 65 Tennessee towns here for snowfall; Crossville gets the most at 14 inches.
| Town | Miles | Snow | Two car, paved |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bristol, VA | 5 | 9 in | A shovel is enough |
| Elizabethton, TN | 15 | 6 in | A shovel is enough |
| Johnson City, TN | 17 | 6 in | A shovel is enough |
| Kingsport, TN | 18 | 5 in | A shovel is enough |
| Boone, NC | 39 | 26 in | Cordless single-stage |
| Greeneville, TN | 43 | 8 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 Bristol Tri City Airport, 12.0 miles from Bristol. 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.