Do you need a snowblower in Kankakee, IL?
The machine for a Kankakee driveway
A shovel is enough
A normal winter drops about 2.7 tons of snow on this driveway in Kankakee, 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 Kankakee is light enough for one.
How much snow Kankakee gets
- Snow a year
- 21 in
- Storms of 5 in or more
- 0.9 a winter
- Storms of 10 in or more
- almost never
- Days with snow on the ground
- 35
Light, below most snowy cities. A typical snowy US city gets about 1.7 times as much. It tends to stay, so each storm lands on the last one.
On a two car driveway that is about 2.7 tons of snow to move in a season, and a 10 inch storm weighs 2,600 pounds.
When the snow comes in Kankakee
- Nov0.6
- Dec5.3
- Jan8.1
- Feb3.4
- Mar3.0
- Apr0.3
Snow worth clearing runs from December to March, heaviest in January. Buy the shovel before the first fall, when stores still have them.
Towns near Kankakee
Kankakee is number 180 of 225 Illinois towns here for snowfall; St. Charles gets the most at 46 inches.
| Town | Miles | Snow | Two car, paved |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bradley, IL | 4 | 21 in | A shovel is enough |
| Bourbonnais, IL | 6 | 27 in | Cordless single-stage |
| Manhattan, IL | 23 | 17 in | A shovel is enough |
| Lowell, IN | 27 | 30 in | Cordless single-stage |
| Richton Park, IL | 27 | 28 in | Cordless single-stage |
| Park Forest, IL | 28 | 28 in | Cordless single-stage |
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 Kankakee Metro Wastewater, 2.6 miles from Kankakee. 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.