SnowfallCheck

Do you need a snowblower in Star, ID?

Your answer for Star

A shovel is enough

A normal winter drops about 1.3 tons of snow on this driveway in Star, 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 Star is light enough for one.

What a Star winter brings

Snow a year
10 in
Storms of 5 in or more
0.2 a winter
Storms of 10 in or more
almost never
Days with snow on the ground
12

Light, below most snowy cities. A typical snowy US city gets about 3.3 times as much. It tends to stay, so each storm lands on the last one.

On a two car driveway that is about 1.3 tons of snow to move in a season, and a 10 inch storm weighs 2,600 pounds.

When the snow comes in Star

  1. Nov0.5
  2. Dec4.2
  3. Jan3.4
  4. Feb1.4
  5. Mar0.2

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

Star and its neighbours

Star is number 25 of 26 Idaho towns here for snowfall; Rexburg gets the most at 70 inches.

TownMilesSnowTwo car, paved
Eagle, ID418 inA shovel is enough
Middleton, ID610 inA shovel is enough
Meridian, ID818 inA shovel is enough
Nampa, ID910 inA shovel is enough
Caldwell, ID910 inA shovel is enough
Garden City, ID1018 inA 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 Nampa Sugar Factory, 8.0 miles from Star. 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.