Do you need a snowblower in Wenatchee, WA?
The machine for a Wenatchee driveway
A shovel is enough
A normal winter drops about 2.1 tons of snow on this driveway in Wenatchee, 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 Wenatchee is light enough for one.
What a Wenatchee winter brings
- Snow a year
- 17 in
- Storms of 5 in or more
- 0.6 a winter
- Storms of 10 in or more
- almost never
- Days with snow on the ground
- 30
Light, below most snowy cities. A typical snowy US city gets about 2.0 times as much. It tends to stay, so each storm lands on the last one.
On a two car driveway that is about 2.1 tons of snow to move in a season, and a 10 inch storm weighs 2,600 pounds.
When the snow comes in Wenatchee
- Nov1.5
- Dec6.0
- Jan5.6
- Feb3.0
- Mar0.4
Snow worth clearing runs from November to February, heaviest in December. Buy the shovel before the first fall, when stores still have them.
Wenatchee and its neighbours
Wenatchee is number 10 of 91 Washington towns here for snowfall; Spokane gets the most at 45 inches.
| Town | Miles | Snow | Two car, paved |
|---|---|---|---|
| East Wenatchee, WA | 2 | 17 in | A shovel is enough |
| Ellensburg, WA | 32 | 20 in | A shovel is enough |
| Moses Lake, WA | 54 | 14 in | A shovel is enough |
| Yakima, WA | 59 | 20 in | A shovel is enough |
| Snoqualmie, WA | 72 | 4 in | A shovel is enough |
| Sunnyside, WA | 79 | 10 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 Wenatchee, 1.0 miles from Wenatchee. 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.