SnowfallCheck

Do you need a snowblower in Somerville, NJ?

The machine for a Somerville driveway

A shovel is enough

A normal winter drops about 2.7 tons of snow on this driveway in Somerville, 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 Somerville is light enough for one.

A normal Somerville winter

Snow a year
21 in
Storms of 5 in or more
1.2 a winter
Storms of 10 in or more
about once every 3 winters
Days with snow on the ground
27

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 2.7 tons of snow to move in a season, and a 10 inch storm weighs 2,600 pounds.

When the snow comes in Somerville

  1. Oct0.1
  2. Nov0.1
  3. Dec3.5
  4. Jan6.8
  5. Feb6.7
  6. Mar3.6
  7. Apr0.2

Snow worth clearing runs from December to March, heaviest in January. Buy the shovel before the first fall, when stores still have them.

Towns near Somerville

Somerville is number 104 of 116 New Jersey towns here for snowfall; Phillipsburg gets the most at 41 inches.

TownMilesSnowTwo car, paved
Manville, NJ221 inA shovel is enough
Bound Brook, NJ421 inA shovel is enough
Middlesex, NJ621 inA shovel is enough
North Plainfield, NJ1021 inA shovel is enough
South Plainfield, NJ1021 inA shovel is enough
New Brunswick, NJ1029 inGas single-stage

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 Bound Brook 2W, 2.1 miles from Somerville. 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.