SnowfallCheck

Do you need a snowblower in Lee's Summit, MO?

The machine for a Lee's Summit driveway

A shovel is enough

A normal winter drops about 1.1 tons of snow on this driveway in Lee's Summit, 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 Lee's Summit is light enough for one.

What a Lee's Summit winter brings

Snow a year
9 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
20

Light, below most snowy cities. A typical snowy US city gets about 5.0 times as much. It tends to stay, so each storm lands on the last one.

On a two car driveway that is about 1.1 tons of snow to move in a season, and a 10 inch storm weighs 2,600 pounds.

When the snow comes in Lee's Summit

  1. Oct0.3
  2. Nov0.5
  3. Dec2.4
  4. Jan2.6
  5. Feb1.6
  6. Mar1.1
  7. Apr0.1

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

Lee's Summit and its neighbours

Lee's Summit is number 57 of 80 Missouri towns here for snowfall; St. Joseph gets the most at 21 inches.

TownMilesSnowTwo car, paved
Raytown, MO69 inA shovel is enough
Grandview, MO89 inA shovel is enough
Blue Springs, MO913 inA shovel is enough
Raymore, MO917 inA shovel is enough
Belton, MO119 inA shovel is enough
Grain Valley, MO1113 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 Unity Village, 2.0 miles from Lee's Summit. 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.