Do you need a snowblower in Portsmouth, VA?
What clears snow in Portsmouth
A shovel is enough
A normal winter drops about 0.4 tons of snow on this driveway in Portsmouth, 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 Portsmouth is light enough for one.
A normal Portsmouth winter
- Snow a year
- 3 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
- 1
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 Portsmouth waiting a day is often a real option.
On a two car driveway that is about 0.4 tons of snow to move in a season, and a 10 inch storm weighs 2,600 pounds.
When the snow comes in Portsmouth
- Jan2.3
- Feb0.7
Inches of new snow per month, averaged over 1991 to 2020.
Portsmouth and its neighbours
Portsmouth is number 36 of 39 Virginia towns here for snowfall; Blacksburg gets the most at 25 inches.
| Town | Miles | Snow | Two car, paved |
|---|---|---|---|
| Norfolk, VA | 8 | 3 in | A shovel is enough |
| Chesapeake, VA | 13 | 6 in | A shovel is enough |
| Hampton, VA | 13 | 3 in | No snowblower |
| Newport News, VA | 18 | 3 in | No snowblower |
| Poquoson, VA | 19 | 3 in | No snowblower |
| Virginia Beach, VA | 19 | 3 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 Norfolk Nas, 7.5 miles from Portsmouth. 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.