SnowfallCheck

Do you need a snowblower in South Plainfield, NJ?

Your answer for South Plainfield

A shovel is enough

A normal winter drops about 2.8 tons of snow on this driveway in South Plainfield, 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 South Plainfield is light enough for one.

A normal South Plainfield winter

Snow a year
21 in
Storms of 5 in or more
1.1 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 2.8 tons of snow to move in a season, and a 10 inch storm weighs 2,600 pounds.

When the snow comes in South Plainfield

  1. Nov0.2
  2. Dec2.4
  3. Jan5.1
  4. Feb8.3
  5. Mar5.3
  6. 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.

South Plainfield and its neighbours

South Plainfield is number 100 of 116 New Jersey towns here for snowfall; Phillipsburg gets the most at 41 inches.

TownMilesSnowTwo car, paved
Plainfield, NJ321 inA shovel is enough
North Plainfield, NJ321 inA shovel is enough
Metuchen, NJ421 inA shovel is enough
Middlesex, NJ421 inA shovel is enough
Highland Park, NJ529 inGas single-stage
New Brunswick, NJ629 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 Plainfield, 2.1 miles from South Plainfield. 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.