SnowfallCheck

Do you need a snowblower in Kansas City, MO?

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.

How much snow Kansas City gets

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
20

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 42 of 80 Missouri towns here for snowfall; St. Joseph gets the most at 21 inches.

TownMilesSnowTwo car, paved
Gladstone, MO611 inA shovel is enough
Mission, KS911 inA shovel is enough
Raytown, MO109 inA shovel is enough
Kansas City, KS1011 inA shovel is enough
Prairie Village, KS1111 inA shovel is enough
Liberty, MO1119 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, 2.5 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.