Do you need a snowblower in Centralia, WA?
Your answer for Centralia
A shovel is enough
A normal winter drops about 0.5 tons of snow on this driveway in Centralia, 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 Centralia is light enough for one.
A normal Centralia winter
- Snow a year
- 4 in
- Storms of 5 in or more
- 0.3 a winter
- Storms of 10 in or more
- almost never
- Days with snow on the ground
- 0
Light, below most snowy cities. A typical snowy US city gets about 10.0 times as much. Most of it melts within a few days, so in Centralia waiting a day is often a real option.
On a two car driveway that is about 0.5 tons of snow to move in a season, and a 10 inch storm weighs 2,600 pounds.
When the snow comes in Centralia
- Nov0.1
- Dec0.6
- Jan1.5
- Feb0.6
- Mar0.9
Inches of new snow per month, averaged over 1991 to 2020.
Centralia and its neighbours
Centralia is number 62 of 91 Washington towns here for snowfall; Spokane gets the most at 45 inches.
| Town | Miles | Snow | Two car, paved |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tumwater, WA | 19 | 4 in | A shovel is enough |
| Yelm, WA | 22 | 4 in | A shovel is enough |
| Olympia, WA | 22 | 4 in | A shovel is enough |
| Lacey, WA | 24 | 4 in | A shovel is enough |
| Shelton, WA | 35 | 4 in | A shovel is enough |
| Lakewood, WA | 37 | 6 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 Doty 3 E, 13.0 miles from Centralia. 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.