Do you need a snowblower in Oak Ridge, TN?
Your answer for Oak Ridge
A shovel is enough
A normal winter drops about 0.6 tons of snow on this driveway in Oak Ridge, 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 Ridge is light enough for one.
How much snow Oak Ridge gets
- Snow a year
- 4 in
- Storms of 5 in or more
- 0.2 a winter
- Storms of 10 in or more
- almost never
- Days with snow on the ground
- 4
Light, below most snowy cities. A typical snowy US city gets about 10.0 times as much. Most of it melts within a few days, so in Oak Ridge waiting a day is often a real option.
On a two car driveway that is about 0.6 tons of snow to move in a season, and a 10 inch storm weighs 2,600 pounds.
When the snow comes in Oak Ridge
- Dec0.6
- Jan1.8
- Feb1.4
- Mar0.6
Snow worth clearing runs from January to February, heaviest in January. Buy the shovel before the first fall, when stores still have them.
Oak Ridge and its neighbours
Oak Ridge is number 20 of 65 Tennessee towns here for snowfall; Crossville gets the most at 14 inches.
| Town | Miles | Snow | Two car, paved |
|---|---|---|---|
| Farragut, TN | 9 | 4 in | A shovel is enough |
| Lenoir City, TN | 10 | 4 in | A shovel is enough |
| Clinton, TN | 13 | 3 in | A shovel is enough |
| Knoxville, TN | 19 | 5 in | A shovel is enough |
| Alcoa, TN | 21 | 5 in | A shovel is enough |
| Maryville, TN | 23 | 5 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 Oak Ridge Atdd, 3.4 miles from Oak Ridge. 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.