SnowfallCheck

Do you need a snowblower in Cape Girardeau, MO?

The machine for a Cape Girardeau driveway

A shovel is enough

A normal winter drops about 1.0 tons of snow on this driveway in Cape Girardeau, 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 Cape Girardeau is light enough for one.

What a Cape Girardeau winter brings

Snow a year
8 in
Storms of 5 in or more
0.7 a winter
Storms of 10 in or more
almost never
Days with snow on the ground
10

Light, below most snowy cities. A typical snowy US city gets about 5.0 times as much. It tends to stay, so each storm lands on the last one.

On a two car driveway that is about 1.0 tons of snow to move in a season, and a 10 inch storm weighs 2,600 pounds.

When the snow comes in Cape Girardeau

  1. Oct0.1
  2. Nov0.1
  3. Dec2.4
  4. Jan2.2
  5. Feb1.2
  6. Mar1.5

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

Towns near Cape Girardeau

Cape Girardeau is number 72 of 80 Missouri towns here for snowfall; St. Joseph gets the most at 21 inches.

TownMilesSnowTwo car, paved
Jackson, MO78 inA shovel is enough
Sikeston, MO293 inA shovel is enough
Carbondale, IL3411 inA shovel is enough
Herrin, IL4410 inA shovel is enough
Marion, IL4510 inA shovel is enough
Paducah, KY533 inA 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 Jackson, 7.7 miles from Cape Girardeau. 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.