Do you need a snowblower in Hempstead, NY?
Your answer for Hempstead
A shovel is enough
A normal winter drops about 2.4 tons of snow on this driveway in Hempstead, 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 Hempstead is light enough for one.
What a Hempstead winter brings
- 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
- 20
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 2.4 tons of snow to move in a season, and a 10 inch storm weighs 2,600 pounds.
When the snow comes in Hempstead
- Nov0.2
- Dec5.7
- Jan2.9
- Feb6.2
- Mar3.1
- Apr0.4
Snow worth clearing runs from December to March, heaviest in February. Buy the shovel before the first fall, when stores still have them.
Towns near Hempstead
Hempstead is number 81 of 90 New York towns here for snowfall; Utica gets the most at 164 inches.
| Town | Miles | Snow | Two car, paved |
|---|---|---|---|
| Garden City, NY | 2 | 19 in | A shovel is enough |
| Rockville Centre, NY | 3 | 26 in | Gas single-stage |
| Mineola, NY | 3 | 19 in | A shovel is enough |
| New Hyde Park, NY | 4 | 19 in | A shovel is enough |
| Freeport, NY | 4 | 26 in | Gas single-stage |
| Westbury, NY | 4 | 19 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 Mineola, 2.0 miles from Hempstead. 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.
- Days with snow on the ground come from a second nearby station, because the closest one does not record snow depth.