Do you need a snowblower in Oak Harbor, WA?
The machine for a Oak Harbor driveway
A shovel is enough
A normal winter drops about 0.7 tons of snow on this driveway in Oak Harbor, 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 Oak Harbor is light enough for one.
What a Oak Harbor winter brings
- Snow a year
- 5 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
- 3
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 Oak Harbor waiting a day is often a real option.
On a two car driveway that is about 0.7 tons of snow to move in a season, and a 10 inch storm weighs 2,600 pounds.
When the snow comes in Oak Harbor
- Nov0.3
- Dec2.4
- Jan1.1
- Feb1.0
- Mar0.6
Snow worth clearing runs from December to February, heaviest in December. Buy the shovel before the first fall, when stores still have them.
Oak Harbor and its neighbours
Oak Harbor is number 38 of 91 Washington towns here for snowfall; Spokane gets the most at 45 inches.
| Town | Miles | Snow | Two car, paved |
|---|---|---|---|
| Anacortes, WA | 13 | 5 in | A shovel is enough |
| Port Townsend, WA | 14 | 1 in | No snowblower |
| Mount Vernon, WA | 17 | 6 in | A shovel is enough |
| Burlington, WA | 18 | 6 in | A shovel is enough |
| Sedro-Woolley, WA | 24 | 6 in | A shovel is enough |
| Arlington, WA | 24 | 4 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 Whidbey Island Nas, 4.3 miles from Oak Harbor. 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.