Do you need a snowblower in Roanoke, VA?
What clears snow in Roanoke
A shovel is enough
A normal winter drops about 1.9 tons of snow on this driveway in Roanoke, 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 Roanoke is light enough for one.
A normal Roanoke winter
- Snow a year
- 15 in
- Storms of 5 in or more
- 0.8 a winter
- Storms of 10 in or more
- about once every 3 winters
- Days with snow on the ground
- 11
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 1.9 tons of snow to move in a season, and a 10 inch storm weighs 2,600 pounds.
When the snow comes in Roanoke
- Nov0.1
- Dec3.2
- Jan4.3
- Feb4.8
- Mar2.3
- Apr0.1
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 Roanoke
Roanoke is number 18 of 39 Virginia towns here for snowfall; Blacksburg gets the most at 25 inches.
| Town | Miles | Snow | Two car, paved |
|---|---|---|---|
| Salem, VA | 5 | 15 in | A shovel is enough |
| Blacksburg, VA | 26 | 25 in | Gas single-stage |
| Christiansburg, VA | 26 | 22 in | A shovel is enough |
| Radford, VA | 35 | 22 in | A shovel is enough |
| Martinsville, VA | 41 | 9 in | A shovel is enough |
| Lynchburg, VA | 43 | 12 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 Roanoke Regional Airport, 2.8 miles from Roanoke. 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.