Do you need a snowblower in Burlington, IA?
Your answer for Burlington
A shovel is enough
A normal winter drops about 2.8 tons of snow on this driveway in Burlington, 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 Burlington is light enough for one.
What a Burlington winter brings
- Snow a year
- 22 in
- Storms of 5 in or more
- 1.4 a winter
- Storms of 10 in or more
- about once every 10 winters
- Days with snow on the ground
- 34
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 2.8 tons of snow to move in a season, and a 10 inch storm weighs 2,600 pounds.
When the snow comes in Burlington
- Oct0.1
- Nov1.3
- Dec5.3
- Jan6.3
- Feb5.8
- Mar2.1
- Apr0.9
Snow worth clearing runs from November to March, heaviest in January. Buy the shovel before the first fall, when stores still have them.
Burlington and its neighbours
Burlington is number 41 of 41 Iowa towns here for snowfall; Mason City gets the most at 44 inches.
| Town | Miles | Snow | Two car, paved |
|---|---|---|---|
| Macomb, IL | 33 | 11 in | A shovel is enough |
| Galesburg, IL | 40 | 26 in | Cordless single-stage |
| Muscatine, IA | 42 | 24 in | Cordless single-stage |
| Rock Island, IL | 54 | 36 in | Cordless single-stage |
| Moline, IL | 57 | 36 in | Cordless single-stage |
| Davenport, IA | 58 | 36 in | Cordless 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 Burlington 2S, 2.3 miles from Burlington. 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.