Do you need a snowblower in Greenbelt, MD?
The machine for a Greenbelt driveway
A shovel is enough
A normal winter drops about 2.1 tons of snow on this driveway in Greenbelt, 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 Greenbelt is light enough for one.
What a Greenbelt winter brings
- Snow a year
- 16 in
- Storms of 5 in or more
- 1.0 a winter
- Storms of 10 in or more
- about once every 5 winters
- Days with snow on the ground
- 14
Light, below most snowy cities. A typical snowy US city gets about 2.5 times as much. It tends to stay, so each storm lands on the last one.
On a two car driveway that is about 2.1 tons of snow to move in a season, and a 10 inch storm weighs 2,600 pounds.
When the snow comes in Greenbelt
- Nov0.2
- Dec2.3
- Jan5.7
- Feb5.0
- Mar2.5
- Apr0.1
Snow worth clearing runs from December to March, heaviest in January. Buy the shovel before the first fall, when stores still have them.
Greenbelt and its neighbours
Greenbelt is number 15 of 23 Maryland towns here for snowfall; Hagerstown gets the most at 33 inches.
| Town | Miles | Snow | Two car, paved |
|---|---|---|---|
| New Carrollton, MD | 2 | 16 in | A shovel is enough |
| College Park, MD | 3 | 16 in | A shovel is enough |
| Hyattsville, MD | 4 | 10 in | A shovel is enough |
| Takoma Park, MD | 6 | 10 in | A shovel is enough |
| Laurel, MD | 7 | 16 in | A shovel is enough |
| Bowie, MD | 8 | 16 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 Beltsville, 3.5 miles from Greenbelt. 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.