SnowfallCheck

Do you need a snowblower in McPherson, KS?

Your answer for McPherson

A shovel is enough

A normal winter drops about 1.8 tons of snow on this driveway in McPherson, 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 McPherson is light enough for one.

A normal McPherson winter

Snow a year
14 in
Storms of 5 in or more
0.5 a winter
Storms of 10 in or more
almost never
Days with snow on the ground
18

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 1.8 tons of snow to move in a season, and a 10 inch storm weighs 2,600 pounds.

When the snow comes in McPherson

  1. Oct0.1
  2. Nov0.6
  3. Dec2.9
  4. Jan4.1
  5. Feb3.3
  6. Mar2.6
  7. Apr0.6

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

Towns near McPherson

McPherson is number 12 of 38 Kansas towns here for snowfall; Dodge City gets the most at 19 inches.

TownMilesSnowTwo car, paved
Hutchinson, KS257 inA shovel is enough
Newton, KS299 inA shovel is enough
Salina, KS3116 inA shovel is enough
Bel Aire, KS4713 inA shovel is enough
Wichita, KS5013 inA shovel is enough
Andover, KS559 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 Mcpherson, 3.0 miles from McPherson. 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.