Do you need a snowblower in Radford, VA?
The machine for a Radford driveway
A shovel is enough
A normal winter drops about 2.8 tons of snow on this driveway in Radford, 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 Radford is light enough for one.
What a Radford winter brings
- Snow a year
- 22 in
- Storms of 5 in or more
- 1.3 a winter
- Storms of 10 in or more
- about once every 10 winters
- Days with snow on the ground
- 20
Light, below most snowy cities. A typical snowy US city gets about 1.7 times as much. It tends to stay, so each storm lands on the last one.
On a two car driveway that is about 2.8 tons of snow to move in a season, and a 10 inch storm weighs 2,600 pounds.
When the snow comes in Radford
- Nov0.4
- Dec4.4
- Jan6.3
- Feb6.6
- Mar3.7
- Apr0.3
Snow worth clearing runs from December to March, heaviest in February. Buy the shovel before the first fall, when stores still have them.
Towns near Radford
Radford is number 4 of 39 Virginia towns here for snowfall; Blacksburg gets the most at 25 inches.
| Town | Miles | Snow | Two car, paved |
|---|---|---|---|
| Christiansburg, VA | 9 | 22 in | A shovel is enough |
| Blacksburg, VA | 11 | 25 in | Gas single-stage |
| Salem, VA | 30 | 15 in | A shovel is enough |
| Roanoke, VA | 35 | 15 in | A shovel is enough |
| Mount Airy, NC | 42 | 8 in | A shovel is enough |
| Martinsville, VA | 49 | 9 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 Christiansburg, 8.6 miles from Radford. 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.