Do you need a snowblower in Chino Valley, AZ?
The machine for a Chino Valley driveway
A shovel is enough
A normal winter drops about 1.3 tons of snow on this driveway in Chino Valley, 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 Chino Valley is light enough for one.
A normal Chino Valley winter
- Snow a year
- 10 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
- 4
Light, below most snowy cities. A typical snowy US city gets about 3.3 times as much. Most of it melts within a few days, so in Chino Valley waiting a day is often a real option.
On a two car driveway that is about 1.3 tons of snow to move in a season, and a 10 inch storm weighs 2,600 pounds.
When the snow comes in Chino Valley
- Nov0.9
- Dec1.4
- Jan1.9
- Feb3.1
- Mar2.5
- Apr0.4
Snow worth clearing runs from December to March, heaviest in February. Buy the shovel before the first fall, when stores still have them.
Chino Valley and its neighbours
Chino Valley is number 6 of 44 Arizona towns here for snowfall; Flagstaff gets the most at 90 inches.
| Town | Miles | Snow | Two car, paved |
|---|---|---|---|
| Prescott, AZ | 10 | 10 in | A shovel is enough |
| Prescott Valley, AZ | 11 | 10 in | A shovel is enough |
| Cottonwood, AZ | 24 | 1 in | No snowblower |
| Camp Verde, AZ | 33 | 0 in | No snowblower |
| Flagstaff, AZ | 54 | 90 in | Two-stage snowblower |
| Peoria, AZ | 66 | 0 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 Prescott, 11.8 miles from Chino Valley. 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.