Do you need a snowblower in Miami, OK?
The machine for a Miami driveway
A shovel is enough
A normal winter drops about 0.9 tons of snow on this driveway in Miami, 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 Miami is light enough for one.
How much snow Miami gets
- Snow a year
- 7 in
- Storms of 5 in or more
- 0.4 a winter
- Storms of 10 in or more
- almost never
- Days with snow on the ground
- 8
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 0.9 tons of snow to move in a season, and a 10 inch storm weighs 2,600 pounds.
When the snow comes in Miami
- Nov0.2
- Dec2.3
- Jan2.3
- Feb1.1
- Mar1.3
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 Miami
Miami is number 15 of 45 Oklahoma towns here for snowfall; Woodward gets the most at 15 inches.
| Town | Miles | Snow | Two car, paved |
|---|---|---|---|
| Joplin, MO | 24 | 8 in | A shovel is enough |
| Neosho, MO | 27 | 8 in | A shovel is enough |
| Webb City, MO | 28 | 8 in | A shovel is enough |
| Carthage, MO | 35 | 8 in | A shovel is enough |
| Pittsburg, KS | 38 | 10 in | A shovel is enough |
| Bella Vista, AR | 44 | 10 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 Columbus, 20.0 miles from Miami. 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.