Do you need a snowblower in Lancaster, OH?
The machine for a Lancaster driveway
A shovel is enough
A normal winter drops about 2.2 tons of snow on this driveway in Lancaster, 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 Lancaster is light enough for one.
A normal Lancaster winter
- Snow a year
- 17 in
- Storms of 5 in or more
- 0.3 a winter
- Storms of 10 in or more
- almost never
- Days with snow on the ground
- 21
Light, below most snowy cities. A typical snowy US city gets about 2.0 times as much. It tends to stay, so each storm lands on the last one.
On a two car driveway that is about 2.2 tons of snow to move in a season, and a 10 inch storm weighs 2,600 pounds.
When the snow comes in Lancaster
- Nov0.3
- Dec2.9
- Jan5.4
- Feb6.2
- Mar2.1
- 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.
Towns near Lancaster
Lancaster is number 136 of 176 Ohio towns here for snowfall; Euclid gets the most at 114 inches.
| Town | Miles | Snow | Two car, paved |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pickerington, OH | 14 | 28 in | Cordless single-stage |
| Canal Winchester, OH | 14 | 28 in | Cordless single-stage |
| Reynoldsburg, OH | 19 | 28 in | Cordless single-stage |
| Circleville, OH | 19 | 15 in | A shovel is enough |
| Pataskala, OH | 21 | 28 in | Cordless single-stage |
| Heath, OH | 22 | 15 in | A 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 Buckeye Lake 1 N, 17.0 miles from Lancaster. 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.
- Days with snow on the ground come from a second nearby station, because the closest one does not record snow depth.