Do you need a snowblower in Bristol, VA?
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 24 of 39 Virginia towns here for snowfall; Blacksburg gets the most at 25 inches.
| Town | Miles | Snow | Two car, paved |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bristol, TN | 5 | 9 in | A shovel is enough |
| Elizabethton, TN | 20 | 6 in | A shovel is enough |
| Kingsport, TN | 22 | 5 in | A shovel is enough |
| Johnson City, TN | 23 | 6 in | A shovel is enough |
| Boone, NC | 39 | 26 in | Cordless single-stage |
| Greeneville, TN | 48 | 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, 16.9 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.