Do you need a snowblower in Liberty, MO?
The machine for a Liberty driveway
A shovel is enough
A normal winter drops about 2.5 tons of snow on this driveway in Liberty, 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 Liberty is light enough for one.
What a Liberty winter brings
- Snow a year
- 19 in
- Storms of 5 in or more
- 0.6 a winter
- Storms of 10 in or more
- almost never
- Days with snow on the ground
- 19
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 2.5 tons of snow to move in a season, and a 10 inch storm weighs 2,600 pounds.
When the snow comes in Liberty
- Oct0.3
- Nov0.9
- Dec4.6
- Jan5.0
- Feb6.5
- Mar2.0
- 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.
Liberty and its neighbours
Liberty is number 2 of 80 Missouri towns here for snowfall; St. Joseph gets the most at 21 inches.
| Town | Miles | Snow | Two car, paved |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gladstone, MO | 8 | 11 in | A shovel is enough |
| Kearney, MO | 9 | 19 in | A shovel is enough |
| Kansas City, MO | 11 | 11 in | A shovel is enough |
| Independence, MO | 11 | 13 in | A shovel is enough |
| Excelsior Springs, MO | 12 | 19 in | A shovel is enough |
| Smithville, MO | 13 | 18 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 Kearney 3E, 9.9 miles from Liberty. 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.