Do you need a snowblower in Durham, NC?
The machine for a Durham driveway
A shovel is enough
A normal winter drops about 0.7 tons of snow on this driveway in Durham, 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 Durham is light enough for one.
A normal Durham winter
- Snow a year
- 5 in
- Storms of 5 in or more
- 0.2 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 10.0 times as much. Most of it melts within a few days, so in Durham waiting a day is often a real option.
On a two car driveway that is about 0.7 tons of snow to move in a season, and a 10 inch storm weighs 2,600 pounds.
When the snow comes in Durham
- Nov0.1
- Dec0.8
- Jan2.6
- Feb1.4
- Mar0.3
Snow worth clearing runs from January to February, heaviest in January. Buy the shovel before the first fall, when stores still have them.
Durham and its neighbours
Durham is number 14 of 91 North Carolina towns here for snowfall; Boone gets the most at 26 inches.
| Town | Miles | Snow | Two car, paved |
|---|---|---|---|
| Chapel Hill, NC | 9 | 3 in | No snowblower |
| Morrisville, NC | 10 | 5 in | A shovel is enough |
| Carrboro, NC | 11 | 3 in | No snowblower |
| Cary, NC | 14 | 5 in | A shovel is enough |
| Apex, NC | 17 | 5 in | A shovel is enough |
| Raleigh, NC | 18 | 5 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 Raleigh Durham International Airport, 8.8 miles from Durham. 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.