SnowfallCheck

Do you need a snowblower in Chesapeake, VA?

The machine for a Chesapeake driveway

A shovel is enough

A normal winter drops about 0.8 tons of snow on this driveway in Chesapeake, 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 Chesapeake is light enough for one.

How much snow Chesapeake gets

Snow a year
6 in
Storms of 5 in or more
0.4 a winter
Storms of 10 in or more
almost never
Days with snow on the ground
3

Light, below most snowy cities. A typical snowy US city gets about 5.0 times as much. Most of it melts within a few days, so in Chesapeake waiting a day is often a real option.

On a two car driveway that is about 0.8 tons of snow to move in a season, and a 10 inch storm weighs 2,600 pounds.

When the snow comes in Chesapeake

  1. Dec1.1
  2. Jan3.2
  3. Feb1.5
  4. Mar0.4

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

Chesapeake and its neighbours

Chesapeake is number 26 of 39 Virginia towns here for snowfall; Blacksburg gets the most at 25 inches.

TownMilesSnowTwo car, paved
Portsmouth, VA133 inA shovel is enough
Virginia Beach, VA173 inA shovel is enough
Norfolk, VA173 inA shovel is enough
Suffolk, VA186 inA shovel is enough
Hampton, VA253 inNo snowblower
Elizabeth City, NC270 inNo 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 Norfolk International Airport, 16.6 miles from Chesapeake. 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.