Do you need a snowblower in Manhattan, KS?
Your answer for Manhattan
A shovel is enough
A normal winter drops about 2.3 tons of snow on this driveway in Manhattan, 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 Manhattan is light enough for one.
What a Manhattan winter brings
- Snow a year
- 18 in
- Storms of 5 in or more
- 0.7 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 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 2.3 tons of snow to move in a season, and a 10 inch storm weighs 2,600 pounds.
When the snow comes in Manhattan
- Nov1.1
- Dec4.8
- Jan4.8
- Feb5.0
- Mar1.8
- Apr0.1
Snow worth clearing runs from November to March, heaviest in February. Buy the shovel before the first fall, when stores still have them.
Manhattan and its neighbours
Manhattan is number 4 of 38 Kansas towns here for snowfall; Dodge City gets the most at 19 inches.
| Town | Miles | Snow | Two car, paved |
|---|---|---|---|
| Junction City, KS | 17 | 7 in | A shovel is enough |
| Topeka, KS | 50 | 17 in | A shovel is enough |
| Emporia, KS | 59 | 16 in | A shovel is enough |
| Salina, KS | 60 | 16 in | A shovel is enough |
| Lawrence, KS | 74 | 10 in | A shovel is enough |
| Beatrice, NE | 75 | 19 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 Manhattan, 1.4 miles from Manhattan. 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.