SnowfallCheck

Do you need a snowblower in Fredericksburg, VA?

The machine for a Fredericksburg driveway

A shovel is enough

A normal winter drops about 1.5 tons of snow on this driveway in Fredericksburg, 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 Fredericksburg is light enough for one.

A normal Fredericksburg winter

Snow a year
11 in
Storms of 5 in or more
0.7 a winter
Storms of 10 in or more
about once every 5 winters
Days with snow on the ground
8

Light, below most snowy cities. A typical snowy US city gets about 3.3 times as much. It tends to stay, so each storm lands on the last one.

On a two car driveway that is about 1.5 tons of snow to move in a season, and a 10 inch storm weighs 2,600 pounds.

When the snow comes in Fredericksburg

  1. Dec2.3
  2. Jan3.7
  3. Feb5.2
  4. Mar0.1

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

Fredericksburg and its neighbours

Fredericksburg is number 22 of 39 Virginia towns here for snowfall; Blacksburg gets the most at 25 inches.

TownMilesSnowTwo car, paved
Culpeper, VA3016 inA shovel is enough
Manassas, VA3121 inA shovel is enough
Manassas Park, VA3319 inA shovel is enough
La Plata, MD3315 inA shovel is enough
Warrenton, VA3320 inA shovel is enough
Fairfax, VA4019 inA 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 Fredericksburg Sewage, 2.1 miles from Fredericksburg. 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.