Do you need a snowblower in Staunton, VA?
The machine for a Staunton driveway
A shovel is enough
A normal winter drops about 2.8 tons of snow on this driveway in Staunton, 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 Staunton is light enough for one.
What a Staunton winter brings
- Snow a year
- 22 in
- Storms of 5 in or more
- 1.3 a winter
- Storms of 10 in or more
- about once every 10 winters
- Days with snow on the ground
- 19
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 Staunton
- Nov0.4
- Dec4.8
- Jan5.4
- Feb6.8
- Mar4.1
- 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.
Staunton and its neighbours
Staunton is number 5 of 39 Virginia towns here for snowfall; Blacksburg gets the most at 25 inches.
| Town | Miles | Snow | Two car, paved |
|---|---|---|---|
| Waynesboro, VA | 11 | 22 in | A shovel is enough |
| Harrisonburg, VA | 22 | 19 in | A shovel is enough |
| Charlottesville, VA | 32 | 17 in | A shovel is enough |
| Lynchburg, VA | 53 | 12 in | A shovel is enough |
| Culpeper, VA | 61 | 16 in | A shovel is enough |
| Front Royal, VA | 71 | 21 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 Staunton Wtp, 1.4 miles from Staunton. 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.
- The two nearest weather stations sit at very different heights, and the second one averages 22 inches a year. Hills around Staunton can get a lot more or less than this.