SnowfallCheck

Do you need a snowblower in Moses Lake, WA?

Your answer for Moses Lake

A shovel is enough

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

A normal Moses Lake winter

Snow a year
14 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
25

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 Moses Lake

  1. Nov2.0
  2. Dec4.7
  3. Jan4.9
  4. Feb1.5
  5. Mar0.8

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

Towns near Moses Lake

Moses Lake is number 12 of 91 Washington towns here for snowfall; Spokane gets the most at 45 inches.

TownMilesSnowTwo car, paved
East Wenatchee, WA5117 inA shovel is enough
Wenatchee, WA5417 inA shovel is enough
West Richland, WA562 inNo snowblower
Richland, WA582 inNo snowblower
Pasco, WA602 inNo snowblower
Ellensburg, WA6120 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 Odessa, 30.7 miles from Moses Lake. 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.