Do you need a snowblower in Fairfax, VA?
What clears snow in Fairfax
A shovel is enough
A normal winter drops about 2.4 tons of snow on this driveway in Fairfax, 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 Fairfax is light enough for one.
A normal Fairfax winter
- Snow a year
- 19 in
- Storms of 5 in or more
- 1.3 a winter
- Storms of 10 in or more
- about once every 5 winters
- Days with snow on the ground
- 17
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 2.4 tons of snow to move in a season, and a 10 inch storm weighs 2,600 pounds.
When the snow comes in Fairfax
- Nov0.1
- Dec2.4
- Jan6.5
- Feb7.5
- Mar2.0
Snow worth clearing runs from December to March, heaviest in February. Buy the shovel before the first fall, when stores still have them.
Towns near Fairfax
Fairfax is number 13 of 39 Virginia towns here for snowfall; Blacksburg gets the most at 25 inches.
| Town | Miles | Snow | Two car, paved |
|---|---|---|---|
| Vienna, VA | 4 | 19 in | A shovel is enough |
| Falls Church, VA | 7 | 6 in | A shovel is enough |
| Herndon, VA | 9 | 21 in | A shovel is enough |
| Manassas Park, VA | 10 | 19 in | A shovel is enough |
| Alexandria, VA | 12 | 14 in | A shovel is enough |
| Manassas, VA | 12 | 21 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 Vienna, 2.7 miles from Fairfax. 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.