Do you need a snowblower in Harrisonburg, VA?
Your answer for Harrisonburg
A shovel is enough
A normal winter drops about 2.5 tons of snow on this driveway in Harrisonburg, 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 Harrisonburg is light enough for one.
How much snow Harrisonburg gets
- Snow a year
- 19 in
- Storms of 5 in or more
- 1.3 a winter
- Storms of 10 in or more
- about once every 3 winters
- Days with snow on the ground
- 19
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 2.5 tons of snow to move in a season, and a 10 inch storm weighs 2,600 pounds.
When the snow comes in Harrisonburg
- Oct0.2
- Nov0.6
- Dec3.6
- Jan4.2
- Feb6.2
- Mar4.5
- Apr0.1
Snow worth clearing runs from December to March, heaviest in February. Buy the shovel before the first fall, when stores still have them.
Harrisonburg and its neighbours
Harrisonburg is number 12 of 39 Virginia towns here for snowfall; Blacksburg gets the most at 25 inches.
| Town | Miles | Snow | Two car, paved |
|---|---|---|---|
| Staunton, VA | 22 | 22 in | A shovel is enough |
| Waynesboro, VA | 26 | 22 in | A shovel is enough |
| Charlottesville, VA | 35 | 17 in | A shovel is enough |
| Culpeper, VA | 47 | 16 in | A shovel is enough |
| Front Royal, VA | 50 | 21 in | A shovel is enough |
| Warrenton, VA | 61 | 20 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 Dale Enterprise, 3.6 miles from Harrisonburg. 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.
- The two nearest weather stations sit at very different heights, and the second one averages 22 inches a year. Hills around Harrisonburg can get a lot more or less than this.