Do you need a snowblower in Grand Junction, CO?
The machine for a Grand Junction driveway
A shovel is enough
A normal winter drops about 2.3 tons of snow on this driveway in Grand Junction, 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 Grand Junction is light enough for one.
A normal Grand Junction winter
- Snow a year
- 18 in
- Storms of 5 in or more
- 0.3 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 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 2.3 tons of snow to move in a season, and a 10 inch storm weighs 2,600 pounds.
When the snow comes in Grand Junction
- Oct0.4
- Nov1.9
- Dec5.2
- Jan4.5
- Feb2.9
- Mar1.8
- Apr0.9
- May0.1
Snow worth clearing runs from November to March, heaviest in December. Buy the shovel before the first fall, when stores still have them.
Grand Junction and its neighbours
Grand Junction is number 52 of 53 Colorado towns here for snowfall; Steamboat Springs gets the most at 185 inches.
| Town | Miles | Snow | Two car, paved |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fruita, CO | 10 | 22 in | A shovel is enough |
| Rifle, CO | 53 | 27 in | Cordless single-stage |
| Montrose, CO | 57 | 22 in | A shovel is enough |
| Glenwood Springs, CO | 73 | 39 in | Gas single-stage |
| Vernal, UT | 107 | 20 in | A shovel is enough |
| Durango, CO | 132 | 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 Grand Junction Walker Field, 3.4 miles from Grand Junction. 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.