Do you need a snowblower in Gallup, NM?
Your answer for Gallup
A shovel is enough
A normal winter drops about 2.7 tons of snow on this driveway in Gallup, 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 Gallup is light enough for one.
What a Gallup winter brings
- Snow a year
- 21 in
- Storms of 5 in or more
- 0.7 a winter
- Storms of 10 in or more
- almost never
- Days with snow on the ground
- 24
Light, below most snowy cities. A typical snowy US city gets about 1.7 times as much. It tends to stay, so each storm lands on the last one.
On a two car driveway that is about 2.7 tons of snow to move in a season, and a 10 inch storm weighs 2,600 pounds.
When the snow comes in Gallup
- Oct0.4
- Nov1.6
- Dec5.2
- Jan4.5
- Feb5.7
- Mar2.0
- Apr0.7
- May0.5
Snow worth clearing runs from November to March, heaviest in February. Buy the shovel before the first fall, when stores still have them.
Gallup and its neighbours
Gallup is number 2 of 19 New Mexico towns here for snowfall; Las Vegas gets the most at 22 inches.
| Town | Miles | Snow | Two car, paved |
|---|---|---|---|
| Farmington, NM | 91 | 9 in | A shovel is enough |
| Show Low, AZ | 113 | 19 in | A shovel is enough |
| Rio Rancho, NM | 116 | 9 in | A shovel is enough |
| Los Lunas, NM | 121 | 5 in | A shovel is enough |
| Albuquerque, NM | 122 | 8 in | A shovel is enough |
| Durango, CO | 130 | 64 in | Two-stage 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 Gallup Sand & Gravel, 2.5 miles from Gallup. 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.