Do you need a snowblower in Kearney, NE?
The machine for a Kearney driveway
A shovel is enough
A normal winter drops about 2.8 tons of snow on this driveway in Kearney, 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 Kearney is light enough for one.
How much snow Kearney gets
- Snow a year
- 22 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
- 33
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 2.8 tons of snow to move in a season, and a 10 inch storm weighs 2,600 pounds.
When the snow comes in Kearney
- Oct0.8
- Nov2.8
- Dec3.4
- Jan3.7
- Feb5.6
- Mar3.5
- Apr1.9
- May0.1
Snow worth clearing runs from November to April, heaviest in February. Buy the shovel before the first fall, when stores still have them.
Towns near Kearney
Kearney is number 14 of 16 Nebraska towns here for snowfall; Scottsbluff gets the most at 40 inches.
| Town | Miles | Snow | Two car, paved |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lexington, NE | 35 | 20 in | A shovel is enough |
| Hastings, NE | 37 | 29 in | Cordless single-stage |
| Grand Island, NE | 41 | 28 in | Cordless single-stage |
| North Platte, NE | 92 | 30 in | Cordless single-stage |
| Columbus, NE | 103 | 26 in | Cordless single-stage |
| Norfolk, NE | 126 | 26 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 Kearney 4 NE, 4.0 miles from Kearney. 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.