SnowfallCheck

Do you need a snowblower in Middletown, DE?

Your answer for Middletown

A shovel is enough

A normal winter drops about 2.6 tons of snow on this driveway in Middletown, 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 Middletown is light enough for one.

What a Middletown winter brings

Snow a year
20 in
Storms of 5 in or more
0.9 a winter
Storms of 10 in or more
about once every 3 winters
Days with snow on the ground
17

Light, below most snowy cities. A typical snowy US city gets about 1.7 times as much. It tends to stay, so each storm lands on the last one.

On a two car driveway that is about 2.6 tons of snow to move in a season, and a 10 inch storm weighs 2,600 pounds.

When the snow comes in Middletown

  1. Nov0.2
  2. Dec2.9
  3. Jan6.1
  4. Feb7.8
  5. Mar3.1
  6. 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.

Middletown and its neighbours

Middletown is number 2 of 6 Delaware towns here for snowfall; Newark gets the most at 20 inches.

TownMilesSnowTwo car, paved
Smyrna, DE1213 inA shovel is enough
Elkton, MD1320 inA shovel is enough
Newark, DE1620 inA shovel is enough
Dover, DE2213 inA shovel is enough
Havre de Grace, MD2218 inA shovel is enough
Wilmington, DE2212 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 Wilmington NEW Castle County Airport, 17.0 miles from Middletown. 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.