Do you need a snowblower in Pampa, TX?
What clears snow in Pampa
A shovel is enough
A normal winter drops about 2.0 tons of snow on this driveway in Pampa, 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 Pampa is light enough for one.
A normal Pampa winter
- Snow a year
- 16 in
- Storms of 5 in or more
- 0.7 a winter
- Storms of 10 in or more
- about once every 5 winters
- Days with snow on the ground
- 13
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 2.0 tons of snow to move in a season, and a 10 inch storm weighs 2,600 pounds.
When the snow comes in Pampa
- Oct0.7
- Nov1.5
- Dec4.3
- Jan3.3
- Feb3.3
- Mar1.8
- Apr0.6
- May0.2
Snow worth clearing runs from November to March, heaviest in December. Buy the shovel before the first fall, when stores still have them.
Pampa and its neighbours
Pampa is number 2 of 252 Texas towns here for snowfall; Amarillo gets the most at 17 inches.
| Town | Miles | Snow | Two car, paved |
|---|---|---|---|
| Borger, TX | 26 | 15 in | A shovel is enough |
| Amarillo, TX | 54 | 17 in | A shovel is enough |
| Dumas, TX | 60 | 9 in | A shovel is enough |
| Canyon, TX | 66 | 8 in | A shovel is enough |
| Guymon, OK | 84 | 3 in | No snowblower |
| Elk City, OK | 87 | 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 Pampa #2, 0.7 miles from Pampa. 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.