Do you need a snowblower in Chattanooga, TN?
The machine for a Chattanooga driveway
A shovel is enough
A normal winter drops about 0.5 tons of snow on this driveway in Chattanooga, 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 Chattanooga is light enough for one.
A normal Chattanooga winter
- Snow a year
- 4 in
- Storms of 5 in or more
- 0.1 a winter
- Storms of 10 in or more
- almost never
- Days with snow on the ground
- 2
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 Chattanooga 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 Chattanooga
- Dec0.3
- Jan1.0
- Feb1.2
- Mar1.1
Snow worth clearing runs from January to March, heaviest in February. Buy the shovel before the first fall, when stores still have them.
Towns near Chattanooga
Chattanooga is number 27 of 65 Tennessee towns here for snowfall; Crossville gets the most at 14 inches.
| Town | Miles | Snow | Two car, paved |
|---|---|---|---|
| Red Bank, TN | 4 | 4 in | A shovel is enough |
| East Ridge, TN | 5 | 4 in | A shovel is enough |
| Fort Oglethorpe, GA | 9 | 1 in | No snowblower |
| Collegedale, TN | 11 | 4 in | A shovel is enough |
| Soddy-Daisy, TN | 14 | 4 in | A shovel is enough |
| Cleveland, TN | 23 | 1 in | No 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 Chattanooga Lovell Airport, 3.6 miles from Chattanooga. 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.