SnowfallCheck

Do you need a snowblower in Herrin, IL?

Your answer for Herrin

A shovel is enough

A normal winter drops about 1.3 tons of snow on this driveway in Herrin, 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 Herrin is light enough for one.

What a Herrin winter brings

Snow a year
10 in
Storms of 5 in or more
0.5 a winter
Storms of 10 in or more
about once every 10 winters
Days with snow on the ground
14

Light, below most snowy cities. A typical snowy US city gets about 3.3 times as much. It tends to stay, so each storm lands on the last one.

On a two car driveway that is about 1.3 tons of snow to move in a season, and a 10 inch storm weighs 2,600 pounds.

When the snow comes in Herrin

  1. Oct0.3
  2. Nov0.1
  3. Dec2.7
  4. Jan2.3
  5. Feb2.9
  6. Mar1.4
  7. 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.

Herrin and its neighbours

Herrin is number 220 of 225 Illinois towns here for snowfall; St. Charles gets the most at 46 inches.

TownMilesSnowTwo car, paved
Marion, IL710 inA shovel is enough
Carbondale, IL1211 inA shovel is enough
Mount Vernon, IL3610 inA shovel is enough
Cape Girardeau, MO448 inA shovel is enough
Jackson, MO458 inA shovel is enough
Centralia, IL507 inA 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 Plumfield, 6.8 miles from Herrin. 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.