Do you need a snowblower in Wheeling, WV?
What clears snow in Wheeling
A shovel is enough
A normal winter drops about 2.0 tons of snow on this driveway in Wheeling, 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 Wheeling is light enough for one.
A normal Wheeling winter
- Snow a year
- 15 in
- Storms of 5 in or more
- 0.4 a winter
- Storms of 10 in or more
- about once every 10 winters
- Days with snow on the ground
- 17
Light, below most snowy cities. A typical snowy US city gets about 2.5 times as much. It tends to stay, so each storm lands on the last one.
On a two car driveway that is about 2.0 tons of snow to move in a season, and a 10 inch storm weighs 2,600 pounds.
When the snow comes in Wheeling
- Nov0.2
- Dec2.6
- Jan5.3
- Feb4.4
- Mar2.6
- Apr0.1
Snow worth clearing runs from December to March, heaviest in January. Buy the shovel before the first fall, when stores still have them.
Wheeling and its neighbours
Wheeling is number 8 of 13 West Virginia towns here for snowfall; Weirton gets the most at 44 inches.
| Town | Miles | Snow | Two car, paved |
|---|---|---|---|
| Steubenville, OH | 20 | 15 in | A shovel is enough |
| Weirton, WV | 24 | 44 in | Cordless single-stage |
| Washington, PA | 25 | 32 in | Cordless single-stage |
| Bethel Park, PA | 39 | 32 in | Cordless single-stage |
| Whitehall, PA | 42 | 25 in | Cordless single-stage |
| Jefferson Hills, PA | 43 | 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 Pike Island(Lock & Dam), 5.1 miles from Wheeling. 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.