SnowfallCheck

Do you need a snowblower in Kansas City, KS?

Your answer for Kansas City

A shovel is enough

A normal winter drops about 1.4 tons of snow on this driveway in Kansas City, 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 Kansas City is light enough for one.

What a Kansas City winter brings

Snow a year
11 in
Storms of 5 in or more
0.4 a winter
Storms of 10 in or more
about once every 10 winters
Days with snow on the ground
19

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 1.4 tons of snow to move in a season, and a 10 inch storm weighs 2,600 pounds.

When the snow comes in Kansas City

  1. Oct0.3
  2. Nov0.1
  3. Dec3.5
  4. Jan3.4
  5. Feb3.2
  6. Mar0.4
  7. Apr0.1

Snow worth clearing runs from December to February, heaviest in December. Buy the shovel before the first fall, when stores still have them.

Kansas City and its neighbours

Kansas City is number 23 of 38 Kansas towns here for snowfall; Dodge City gets the most at 19 inches.

TownMilesSnowTwo car, paved
Merriam, KS811 inA shovel is enough
Mission, KS811 inA shovel is enough
Shawnee, KS817 inA shovel is enough
Kansas City, MO1011 inA shovel is enough
Prairie Village, KS1111 inA shovel is enough
Lenexa, KS1114 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 Kansas City Downtown Airport, 7.8 miles from Kansas City. 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.