Do you need a snowblower in Portales, NM?
Your answer for Portales
A shovel is enough
A normal winter drops about 1.0 tons of snow on this driveway in Portales, 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 Portales is light enough for one.
How much snow Portales gets
- Snow a year
- 8 in
- Storms of 5 in or more
- 0.1 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 Portales waiting a day is often a real option.
On a two car driveway that is about 1.0 tons of snow to move in a season, and a 10 inch storm weighs 2,600 pounds.
When the snow comes in Portales
- Oct0.3
- Nov0.5
- Dec2.8
- Jan1.7
- Feb1.4
- Mar0.7
- Apr0.2
Snow worth clearing runs from December to February, heaviest in December. Buy the shovel before the first fall, when stores still have them.
Portales and its neighbours
Portales is number 10 of 19 New Mexico towns here for snowfall; Las Vegas gets the most at 22 inches.
| Town | Miles | Snow | Two car, paved |
|---|---|---|---|
| Clovis, NM | 20 | 13 in | A shovel is enough |
| Levelland, TX | 70 | 6 in | A shovel is enough |
| Hereford, TX | 70 | 14 in | A shovel is enough |
| Lovington, NM | 85 | 1 in | No snowblower |
| Roswell, NM | 87 | 10 in | A shovel is enough |
| Plainview, TX | 93 | 8 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 Portales, 0.3 miles from Portales. 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.