Do you need a snowblower in Charleston, IL?
The machine for a Charleston driveway
A shovel is enough
A normal winter drops about 2.5 tons of snow on this driveway in Charleston, 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 Charleston is light enough for one.
How much snow Charleston gets
- Snow a year
- 19 in
- Storms of 5 in or more
- 1.0 a winter
- Storms of 10 in or more
- about once every 10 winters
- Days with snow on the ground
- 28
Light, below most snowy cities. A typical snowy US city gets about 2.0 times as much. It tends to stay, so each storm lands on the last one.
On a two car driveway that is about 2.5 tons of snow to move in a season, and a 10 inch storm weighs 2,600 pounds.
When the snow comes in Charleston
- Nov0.8
- Dec3.0
- Jan8.1
- Feb5.5
- Mar1.3
- Apr0.3
Snow worth clearing runs from December to March, heaviest in January. Buy the shovel before the first fall, when stores still have them.
Charleston and its neighbours
Charleston is number 183 of 225 Illinois towns here for snowfall; St. Charles gets the most at 46 inches.
| Town | Miles | Snow | Two car, paved |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mattoon, IL | 10 | 15 in | A shovel is enough |
| Effingham, IL | 32 | 15 in | A shovel is enough |
| Terre Haute, IN | 43 | 15 in | A shovel is enough |
| Urbana, IL | 43 | 21 in | A shovel is enough |
| Champaign, IL | 44 | 21 in | A shovel is enough |
| Decatur, IL | 48 | 14 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 Charleston, 0.9 miles from Charleston. 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.