Do you need a snowblower in Philadelphia, PA?
Your answer for Philadelphia
A shovel is enough
A normal winter drops about 2.1 tons of snow on this driveway in Philadelphia, 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 Philadelphia is light enough for one.
A normal Philadelphia winter
- Snow a year
- 16 in
- Storms of 5 in or more
- 0.9 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 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 Philadelphia
- Nov0.1
- Dec3.5
- Jan6.4
- Feb4.0
- Mar2.0
- 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.
Philadelphia and its neighbours
Philadelphia is number 65 of 68 Pennsylvania towns here for snowfall; Erie gets the most at 104 inches.
| Town | Miles | Snow | Two car, paved |
|---|---|---|---|
| Camden, NJ | 5 | 16 in | A shovel is enough |
| Collingswood, NJ | 7 | 22 in | A shovel is enough |
| Gloucester City, NJ | 8 | 22 in | A shovel is enough |
| Yeadon, PA | 8 | 23 in | Gas single-stage |
| Lansdowne, PA | 9 | 23 in | Gas single-stage |
| Darby, PA | 9 | 23 in | Gas single-stage |
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 Phila Franklin Inst, 4.1 miles from Philadelphia. 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.