Do you need a snowblower in Prineville, OR?
What clears snow in Prineville
A shovel is enough
A normal winter drops about 1.1 tons of snow on this driveway in Prineville, 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 Prineville is light enough for one.
What a Prineville winter brings
- Snow a year
- 9 in
- Storms of 5 in or more
- 0.3 a winter
- Storms of 10 in or more
- almost never
- Days with snow on the ground
- 9
Light, below most snowy cities. A typical snowy US city gets about 5.0 times as much. It tends to stay, so each storm lands on the last one.
On a two car driveway that is about 1.1 tons of snow to move in a season, and a 10 inch storm weighs 2,600 pounds.
When the snow comes in Prineville
- Nov1.1
- Dec1.5
- Jan1.8
- Feb3.2
- Mar0.9
- Apr0.3
Snow worth clearing runs from November to February, heaviest in February. Buy the shovel before the first fall, when stores still have them.
Towns near Prineville
Prineville is number 12 of 57 Oregon towns here for snowfall; Baker City gets the most at 79 inches.
| Town | Miles | Snow | Two car, paved |
|---|---|---|---|
| Redmond, OR | 16 | 11 in | A shovel is enough |
| Bend, OR | 28 | 22 in | A shovel is enough |
| The Dalles, OR | 91 | 6 in | A shovel is enough |
| Sweet Home, OR | 91 | 0 in | No snowblower |
| Lebanon, OR | 102 | 0 in | No snowblower |
| Sandy, OR | 103 | 3 in | No snowblower |
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 Prineville, 1.0 miles from Prineville. 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.