SnowfallCheck

Do you need a snowblower in New Carrollton, MD?

Your answer for New Carrollton

A shovel is enough

A normal winter drops about 2.1 tons of snow on this driveway in New Carrollton, 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 New Carrollton is light enough for one.

A normal New Carrollton winter

Snow a year
16 in
Storms of 5 in or more
1.0 a winter
Storms of 10 in or more
about once every 5 winters
Days with snow on the ground
14

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

When the snow comes in New Carrollton

  1. Nov0.2
  2. Dec2.3
  3. Jan5.7
  4. Feb5.0
  5. Mar2.5
  6. Apr0.1

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

New Carrollton and its neighbours

New Carrollton is number 16 of 23 Maryland towns here for snowfall; Hagerstown gets the most at 33 inches.

TownMilesSnowTwo car, paved
Greenbelt, MD216 inA shovel is enough
College Park, MD416 inA shovel is enough
Hyattsville, MD410 inA shovel is enough
Takoma Park, MD710 inA shovel is enough
Bowie, MD716 inA shovel is enough
Washington, DC910 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 Beltsville, 5.3 miles from New Carrollton. 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.