Do you need a snowblower in Salina, KS?
Your answer for Salina
A shovel is enough
A normal winter drops about 2.0 tons of snow on this driveway in Salina, 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 Salina is light enough for one.
What a Salina winter brings
- Snow a year
- 16 in
- Storms of 5 in or more
- 0.7 a winter
- Storms of 10 in or more
- about once every 10 winters
- Days with snow on the ground
- 10
Light, below most snowy cities. A typical snowy US city gets about 2.5 times as much. Most of it melts within a few days, so in Salina waiting a day is often a real option.
On a two car driveway that is about 2.0 tons of snow to move in a season, and a 10 inch storm weighs 2,600 pounds.
When the snow comes in Salina
- Oct0.5
- Nov1.4
- Dec4.1
- Jan3.8
- Feb4.0
- Mar1.3
- Apr0.4
Snow worth clearing runs from November to March, heaviest in December. Buy the shovel before the first fall, when stores still have them.
Salina and its neighbours
Salina is number 10 of 38 Kansas towns here for snowfall; Dodge City gets the most at 19 inches.
| Town | Miles | Snow | Two car, paved |
|---|---|---|---|
| McPherson, KS | 31 | 14 in | A shovel is enough |
| Junction City, KS | 44 | 7 in | A shovel is enough |
| Hutchinson, KS | 54 | 7 in | A shovel is enough |
| Newton, KS | 56 | 9 in | A shovel is enough |
| Manhattan, KS | 60 | 18 in | A shovel is enough |
| Great Bend, KS | 71 | 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 Brookville, 13.3 miles from Salina. 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.