Can You Survive the Boise Winter Weather?
Many of you are thinking of moving to Idaho or living in Boise Idaho, but your number one concern is what is winter like in Boise? Does it snow in Boise Idaho? If so, how much snow does Boise get? Idaho winters can be cold, so if you’re thinking of moving, maybe you are leaving California and don’t know if you can handle the Boise winter…well I will answer the most frequently asked questions we get about the Boise winter weather, and hopefully help you overcome your concerns… if this sun-loving girl can not only tolerate, but also love Boise winter weather, then you can too :).
You probably found this video because you’re thinking of moving to Boise, Idaho and you’ve heard such great things about it, but your biggest fear about moving to Boise, Idaho is the snow. So, in today’s video, I am going to show you what it actually looks like in Boise when it snows. It’s snowing right now, it’s about 13°, and we’re expected to get a lot more snow tonight. We’re going to talk all about the snow and Boise. I’m going to show you what it looks like on the roads in the neighborhoods and answer those most frequently asked questions that we get from you guys that are thinking about moving to Boise, but are concerned about the wintery weather.
Right now, I’m standing at the top of the hill in the Veteran Cemetery. It has a fantastic overlook of the city, and you can see we’re getting socked in with snow right now. Behind me this way is the mountains, so you can see that the mountains are also getting socked in with snow, so while getting snow in the valley is pretty common, we usually get a few snowstorms a year, but most typically we just get a couple of inches, and then it melts the next day. What’s uncommon is what we have right now where we get this Arctic weather coming in, and then it’s cold enough that the snow doesn’t melt, and then it starts to pile up, so this type of snow that we’re having right now it’s not quite as common, but I would have to say that most people here think it’s pretty exciting when it happens, because it means great ski conditions in the mountains and water for the summer. It’s getting a little bit chilly out, here so let’s go hop in the car and take a tour.
Okay. This is driving down Hill Road. This is on the far Northwest side of Boise, and I apologize for the windshield wipers that you’re going to see throughout this video, but I am not going to hang my hand out the window because it will be completely numb in 3 seconds, so you’ll just have to see the windshield wipers once in a while. This is a main road and so as you can see, it’s been cleared. Since it’s snowing right now, there’s a little bit of snow starting to stick on the road again, but in general, the Ada County Highway District does keep these roads clear.
One of the most frequently asked questions that we get about the snow around here is if it’s different in different areas of the valley, and in general it’s not.
The Treasure Valley is about an hour’s Drive wide and long, and it’s pretty much the same weather. It can be windier out on the south side, but it’s pretty similar. Where it’s a little different is in the Foothills, and some of our most popular communities for people to relocate to are communities like Hidden Springs, Dry Creek Ranch and Avimor, and that is often one of people’s biggest concerns about these Foothills communities is what is the snow going to be like during the winter. We are driving right now to Hidden Springs. You can see what the snow is like right now; it’s snowing a little bit. This is a road that is maintained by the county. They do either plow it at certain points, they will use sand, or they use a chemical de-icer, which they do all throughout the city as well, but as it is snowing a little bit right now, you can see that the snow is starting to build up on the roads. It’s possible in Hidden Springs that they could get an inch more of snow than they do at the base of the Foothills, but more often than not, you see the difference when the snow line is pretty low. It’ll be raining in the valley, and then it’ll snow in Hidden Springs, and in that case, that means it’s pretty warm and so typically, even if it snows an inch or two in Hidden Springs when it’s been raining in the valley, it’s going to be melting if it’s that warm. Of course, it always just depends on the snow and that particular system, so actually right now, the south side of the valley has been getting more snow than this north side has, and we have a friend that’s over in Meridian right now, and they said it was absolutely dumping snow over there, and here, it’s just snowing pretty lightly, but all in all, the snow totals will be pretty similar. It will be windier the farther south of the freeway you go, but it’ll overall end up being the same with the same storm.
Before we make it into Hidden Springs, we’ll talk about another frequently asked question, and that is: do you need all-wheel drive.
Yes, if you have one all-wheel drive car in your household, it’s definitely going to be helpful for times like this, but it’s not absolutely necessary. Sometimes a regular front reel drive car, and especially if you get snow tires then that’s very helpful, but snow tires aren’t even necessary seeing as how this type of snow is pretty infrequent for us. Often times, people just stay home if they have to for a couple of days, and really, if they stay on the main roads, they’re pretty clear. This road we’re on right now, Seaman Gulch, it’s not a main road, so that’s why there’s more snow on it.
If you plan on driving up to Mcall in the winter or Sun Valley or Bogus Basin and Ski Resort, then yes, definitely you’re going to need a four-wheel drive or an all-wheel drive vehicle for that, but if the local high schoolers who are learning how to drive can drive their front-wheel drive vehicles in the snow and be pretty safe around town, then if you, coming from a warmer climate, you can learn how to do it, too.
So on a different road in Hidden Springs, you can see that this is what the roads are like when they’re not plowed in the neighborhoods, and so really, that’s kind of where the roads are the most slippery around the valley, is in the neighborhoods where they’re not getting plowed, so people just drive carefully, and once you get out of the neighborhood, they’re cleared.
For this particular storm, it looks like Hidden Springs actually got less snow than we did down on the other side of the Foothills, but we will measure, and we’re going to measure the snow here and see how deep it is, and then we will measure the snow in Avimore and see how deep that is, and then we’ll measure the snow back in the Valley area on the other side of the foot hills and see how deep that is. Okay, we’re in Hidden Springs, and we’re going to see how deep the snow is, and it looks like it’s just under 4 inches deep.
How does school work when we get snow?
We actually don’t get too many snow days here. The school districts do allow for a certain amount of snow days they have that are calculated into their schedule, but we have a lot of winters where we don’t even get any snow days, so of course, when the kids do get a snow day, it’s always super exciting. We did get a snow day when this snow first started falling because we got so much overnight, and it’s largely dependent on if the roads have been cleared, and how the buses are running, but since then, the kids haven’t gotten snow days.
So we left Hidden Springs and we’re going to go up to Avimore to see if they have any more snow up there This is Highway 55. This is the main road this road goes all the way up to Canada, eventually, if you wanted to go up that way, but this is the road that goes up to Mcall, to Horseshoe Bend, and heads North. They do keep this road cleared, but as it’s been snowing the last half an hour, you can see that the snow is building up on the road.
In general, here, our snow is very dry. It’s not like the snow in the Sierra’s that’s very wet and super slippery, so it can make for a little bit safer driving conditions here. The chains are not necessarily required on most of the roads in Idaho, they’re recommended, but there aren’t any like stop points like they have on Highway 80 where they’re going to make you put on chains, or check for all-wheel drive, but generally, you’re just going to slow down when you’re driving, and you’re going to take a long time to break slowly, and take longer to accelerate. You can always tell who the newcomers are to Idaho during the snow because when we’re driving, you know we’re driving a little slower right now, obviously, because of these road conditions, but when you’re driving on the main city roads that are all cleared, they drive so slowly, so you can definitely tell who the newcomers are.
We’re heading into Avimor, and there are definitely times when Avimor gets more snow than the valley. There’s often times where we might get like one or two inches in the valley, and then Avimor might get three or four or 5 inches, so they can frequently get a few inches more than we do in the valley, but we will measure here to see if with this particular storm, they actually got more snow than the valley did.
We are in the lower level of Avimor and let’s see how much snow they have. Aha! 6 inches. So they do have two more inches than there is at Hidden Springs, and I would imagine that as you get towards the houses that are in the tops of the hills, they could have maybe an inch more than that.
We’re back on Highway 55, but we’ve been traveling on some of those other roads that aren’t really main roads, then we will go back down into Eagle so you can kind of see what the roads look like there.
What about a Snow Blower?
Some other tips for you to deal with the snow here is if you purchase a house that has a south facing driveway, then that snow will melt off that driveway, and in our normal snow storms where we just have an inch or two and it’s pretty warm outside still, it’s usually like the mid-30s, then once the sun comes out, if you have a south facing driveway, you don’t even have to shovel, that’ll just melt right off. If you have a north facing driveway that is shady all day in the winter, then even if we don’t get that much snow, then you would probably have to shovel, but either way, in weather like this where it snows quite a bit and then it stays cold so the snow isn’t melting, no matter the direction of your driveway, you’re going to be needing to clear it, so a tip is to just stay on top of that and don’t let it build up too much because becomes harder to shovel. Also get a push shovel. You don’t need a snow blower here unless you happen to live with a very long driveway or something like that. Lots of people do have snowblowers, and usually it’s people who like to kind of help out the community, and they’ll go around and snow blow all the sidewalks to be helpful, but you don’t need a snowblower here.
Another tip here is do not use that ice melt stuff on your driveway. It will cause pitting over time. In 2016 when we did have so much snow that stayed for a long time, the driveways that people were using that stuff on took a beating and they were pitted and flaky and falling apart, so just keep it shoveled.
We are back on Highway 44 or State Street, and yes, they do clear this road as well and, of course, we’ve been getting snow, so there’s snow on the road, but once we have enough snow, they’ll be coming by and they will be clearing this road, and there they are clearing the road right now as we speak.
Is it too cold to walk outside?
I thought I’d show you a little bit of what the snow is like walking inside the neighborhoods. When it’s so cold outside and it snows, you can still get out and walk your dog. People do it every day, all the time. It’s especially nice when people take the time to shovel their walkways and shovel the sidewalk in front of their house, so it’s actually a rule that you are responsible for keeping the sidewalks clear from snow in front of your house.
Now we are in my backyard, so let’s take the measurement here and see how deep the snow is. We are right at about 5 1/2 inches, so that’s pretty interesting. So for at least this storm, Hidden Springs got less snow than Avimor did or we did down here in the valley, and this is the next day.
It actually snowed a lot last night, so let’s go and see how deep the snow is now. Right at about 11 inches.
Hopefully this video helps you learn what to expect when it does snow here in the Boise area and helps you to overcome any of those fears that you may have about moving here to the Boise area.
Helpful Boise, Idaho links for you!!!!
LINK TO GET OUR MONTHLY NEWSLETTER: https://summerastonrealestate.com/newsletter/
LINK TO GET BOISE MAP TOUR VIDEO: https://youtu.be/K-xWSra013U
LINK TO GET BOISE RELOCATION GUIDE: https://summerastonrealestate.com/relocation-guide/
LINK FOR EAGLE IDAHO AREA COMMUNITY GUIDE: https://summerastonrealestate.com/eagle-area-comparison-guide/
