Do you need a snowblower in Mount Airy, NC?
The machine for a Mount Airy driveway
A shovel is enough
A normal winter drops about 1.1 tons of snow on this driveway in Mount Airy, 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 Mount Airy is light enough for one.
How much snow Mount Airy gets
- Snow a year
- 8 in
- Storms of 5 in or more
- 0.6 a winter
- Storms of 10 in or more
- almost never
- Days with snow on the ground
- 5
Light, below most snowy cities. A typical snowy US city gets about 5.0 times as much. Most of it melts within a few days, so in Mount Airy waiting a day is often a real option.
On a two car driveway that is about 1.1 tons of snow to move in a season, and a 10 inch storm weighs 2,600 pounds.
When the snow comes in Mount Airy
- Dec1.7
- Jan3.1
- Feb2.2
- Mar1.2
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 Mount Airy
Mount Airy is number 4 of 91 North Carolina towns here for snowfall; Boone gets the most at 26 inches.
| Town | Miles | Snow | Two car, paved |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lewisville, NC | 30 | 7 in | A shovel is enough |
| Winston-Salem, NC | 34 | 6 in | A shovel is enough |
| Clemmons, NC | 35 | 7 in | A shovel is enough |
| Kernersville, NC | 41 | 7 in | A shovel is enough |
| Radford, VA | 42 | 22 in | A shovel is enough |
| Martinsville, VA | 43 | 9 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 Mt Airy 2 W, 2.3 miles from Mount Airy. 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.
- The two nearest weather stations sit at very different heights, and the second one averages 7 inches a year. Hills around Mount Airy can get a lot more or less than this.