Do you need a snowblower in McMinnville, OR?
The machine for a McMinnville driveway
A shovel is enough
A normal winter drops about 1.7 tons of snow on this driveway in McMinnville, 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 McMinnville is light enough for one.
A normal McMinnville winter
- Snow a year
- 13 in
- Storms of 5 in or more
- 0.5 a winter
- Storms of 10 in or more
- about once every 10 winters
- Days with snow on the ground
- 10
Light, below most snowy cities. A typical snowy US city gets about 2.5 times as much. It tends to stay, so each storm lands on the last one.
On a two car driveway that is about 1.7 tons of snow to move in a season, and a 10 inch storm weighs 2,600 pounds.
When the snow comes in McMinnville
- Nov0.5
- Dec4.5
- Jan3.9
- Feb3.0
- Mar1.3
- Apr0.1
Snow worth clearing runs from December to March, heaviest in December. Buy the shovel before the first fall, when stores still have them.
Towns near McMinnville
McMinnville is number 6 of 57 Oregon towns here for snowfall; Baker City gets the most at 79 inches.
| Town | Miles | Snow | Two car, paved |
|---|---|---|---|
| Newberg, OR | 13 | 1 in | No snowblower |
| Keizer, OR | 17 | 1 in | No snowblower |
| Woodburn, OR | 17 | 1 in | No snowblower |
| Sherwood, OR | 20 | 1 in | No snowblower |
| Dallas, OR | 21 | 10 in | A shovel is enough |
| Salem, OR | 21 | 1 in | No snowblower |
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 Haskins Dam, 10.4 miles from McMinnville. 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.