Do you need a snowblower in Butte-Silver Bow, MT?
Your answer for Butte-Silver Bow
A shovel is enough
A normal winter drops about 2.0 tons of snow on this driveway in Butte-Silver Bow, 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 Butte-Silver Bow is light enough for one.
A normal Butte-Silver Bow winter
- Snow a year
- 15 in
- Storms of 5 in or more
- 0.3 a winter
- Storms of 10 in or more
- about once every 10 winters
- Days with snow on the ground
- 98
Light, below most snowy cities. A typical snowy US city gets about 2.5 times as much. It tends to stay, so each storm lands on the last one.
On a two car driveway that is about 2.0 tons of snow to move in a season, and a 10 inch storm weighs 2,600 pounds.
When the snow comes in Butte-Silver Bow
- Sep0.1
- Oct0.9
- Nov1.7
- Dec4.6
- Jan2.4
- Feb2.0
- Mar2.6
- Apr0.8
- May0.1
Snow worth clearing runs from November to March, heaviest in December. Buy the shovel before the first fall, when stores still have them.
Butte-Silver Bow and its neighbours
Butte-Silver Bow is number 8 of 8 Montana towns here for snowfall; Bozeman gets the most at 91 inches.
| Town | Miles | Snow | Two car, paved |
|---|---|---|---|
| Helena, MT | 57 | 37 in | Cordless single-stage |
| Belgrade, MT | 72 | 91 in | Two-stage snowblower |
| Bozeman, MT | 79 | 91 in | Two-stage snowblower |
| Missoula, MT | 94 | 50 in | Cordless single-stage |
| Great Falls, MT | 128 | 66 in | Two-stage snowblower |
| Rexburg, ID | 149 | 70 in | Two-stage snowblower |
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 Divide, 11.0 miles from Butte-Silver Bow. 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.
- Days with snow on the ground come from a second nearby station, because the closest one does not record snow depth.