SnowfallCheck

Do you need a snowblower in Parkersburg, WV?

The machine for a Parkersburg driveway

A shovel is enough

A normal winter drops about 1.5 tons of snow on this driveway in Parkersburg, 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 Parkersburg is light enough for one.

A normal Parkersburg winter

Snow a year
11 in
Storms of 5 in or more
0.3 a winter
Storms of 10 in or more
about once every 10 winters
Days with snow on the ground
15

Light, below most snowy cities. A typical snowy US city gets about 3.3 times as much. It tends to stay, so each storm lands on the last one.

On a two car driveway that is about 1.5 tons of snow to move in a season, and a 10 inch storm weighs 2,600 pounds.

When the snow comes in Parkersburg

  1. Nov0.2
  2. Dec1.3
  3. Jan5.5
  4. Feb3.3
  5. Mar1.0

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

Parkersburg and its neighbours

Parkersburg is number 10 of 13 West Virginia towns here for snowfall; Weirton gets the most at 44 inches.

TownMilesSnowTwo car, paved
Vienna, WV411 inA shovel is enough
Marietta, OH1222 inA shovel is enough
Athens, OH3018 inA shovel is enough
Cambridge, OH5317 inA shovel is enough
Zanesville, OH5410 inA shovel is enough
St. Albans, WV6311 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 Parkersburg, 1.6 miles from Parkersburg. 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.