Do you need a snowblower in Tacoma, WA?
Your answer for Tacoma
A shovel is enough
A normal winter drops about 0.7 tons of snow on this driveway in Tacoma, 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 Tacoma is light enough for one.
What a Tacoma winter brings
- Snow a year
- 6 in
- Storms of 5 in or more
- 0.1 a winter
- Storms of 10 in or more
- almost never
- Days with snow on the ground
- 5
Light, below most snowy cities. A typical snowy US city gets about 5.0 times as much. Most of it melts within a few days, so in Tacoma waiting a day is often a real option.
On a two car driveway that is about 0.7 tons of snow to move in a season, and a 10 inch storm weighs 2,600 pounds.
When the snow comes in Tacoma
- Nov1.5
- Dec1.5
- Jan1.5
- Feb0.5
- Mar0.6
Snow worth clearing runs from November to January, heaviest in November. Buy the shovel before the first fall, when stores still have them.
Towns near Tacoma
Tacoma is number 31 of 91 Washington towns here for snowfall; Spokane gets the most at 45 inches.
| Town | Miles | Snow | Two car, paved |
|---|---|---|---|
| University Place, WA | 5 | 0 in | No snowblower |
| Fife, WA | 5 | 6 in | A shovel is enough |
| Lakewood, WA | 7 | 6 in | A shovel is enough |
| Federal Way, WA | 7 | 6 in | A shovel is enough |
| Edgewood, WA | 8 | 6 in | A shovel is enough |
| Gig Harbor, WA | 9 | 0 in | No snowblower |
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 Mcmillin Rsvr, 12.5 miles from Tacoma. 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.