Virginia
We will start with the honest part. Virginia’s Eastern Shore averages about eight inches of snow a year, and roughly one day a season with two inches or more. Norfolk averages six inches, but half of Norfolk winters deliver three or less. If you are buying a machine to use fifteen times a winter, this is the wrong coast.
What the average hides is how disruptive the exceptions are. February 2025 put 11 inches on Norfolk, its biggest storm since 2018, and 13 on Virginia Beach. February 2026 dropped 8 to 14 inches on northern Accomack at up to three inches an hour. On days like those, nothing here is set up for snow, and a robot that has been working since midnight is the difference between a normal morning and a lost one.
Zippy Snow is the winter arm of Zippy Lawnz, and our Virginia crew is based in Cape Charles.
Routes grow every season. If your town isn't listed, ask anyway — we'll tell you honestly whether we can reach you this winter.
The Weather Service puts Norfolk’s 30-year average at 6.2 inches but its median at 3.0, which tells you the mean is carried by rare, large storms rather than steady snow. Plan for the rare one and the ordinary winters take care of themselves.
Coastal storms usually arrive as rain in Hampton Roads and change over as the low deepens. The Shore, jutting northeast, often ends up on the snow side while Norfolk gets rain. In the January 2016 blizzard the Virginia Eastern Shore took 9 to 12 inches while Norfolk saw 1 to 2.
Virginia is unusual: VDOT maintains most secondary roads outside cities and towns, including on the Shore. It reaches subdivision streets only once two inches have accumulated, treats neighborhood roads with sand rather than salt, and says plainly that clearing your sidewalk is your job. Its own advice is to wait until the plow has passed, then shovel to the right of your driveway.
A quarter inch of ice is enough to bring lines down. In the February 2026 blizzard more than 19,000 of A&N Electric Cooperative’s 35,000 Shore members lost power, its worst snowstorm since 2018, with multi-day restoration. A robot is normally fully charged before a storm, and one charge clears a typical driveway several times over.
| Where | Time to clear |
|---|---|
| Chincoteague | 3 hours |
| Norfolk | 3 hours |
| Hampton | 3 hours |
| Onancock | 6 hours |
| Virginia Beach | 6 hours* |
| Newport News | 6 hours, 5 ft wide |
| Suffolk | 6 hours |
| Cape Charles | No deadline |
| Chesapeake | No ordinance |
| Accomack & Northampton counties | No ordinance |
Measured from when the snow stops, with most switching to a morning deadline if it ends overnight — Hampton’s is 9 a.m., the earliest we found. *Virginia Beach is the exception: its six hours run from when clearing first becomes reasonably possible, not from when the snow stops. Cape Charles sets no deadline, but the town can still declare an uncleared walk a nuisance, order you to clear it, and bill you for the work. Newport News is the only one that names a cleared width and expressly bans shovelling snow into the street. Accomack and Northampton counties have no ordinance and cannot adopt one, because Virginia’s Dillon Rule limits that power to particular counties. Exmore publishes only a handful of its ordinances, so we can say it has no published snow rule but not that it has none; call the town.
Same people who install and service robotic mowers for Zippy Lawnz. One crew, one app, both seasons.
Yes, from Cape Charles. Our Virginia crew covers the Eastern Shore and crosses the Bay Bridge-Tunnel into Hampton Roads. We do not currently run routes in Richmond, Northern Virginia or the mountains, where the snow is heavier but the drive is not practical. Ask anyway and we will tell you honestly.
On snow alone, for most people here, no. We would rather say that than sell you something. It changes when one of two things is true: you already want robotic mowing, because the same Yarbo Core runs a mower module all summer and the snow blower is an add-on rather than a whole machine, or you cannot afford to be snowed in on the rare bad day for health or work reasons. Those are the two honest cases.
VDOT maintains most secondary roads in Accomack and Northampton, and it plows subdivision streets only after about two inches. It does not plow driveways, and it leaves a berm across your apron. VDOT’s own guidance is to wait for the plow, then clear to the right of your driveway. We map the apron as its own zone and time a pass for after the plow goes through.
Not on a clock. The town’s streets and sidewalks chapter sets no deadline, and neither Accomack nor Northampton county has a sidewalk ordinance at all — Virginia’s Dillon Rule bars those counties from adopting one. But Cape Charles can still treat an uncleared walk as a nuisance under its nuisance chapter, order you to clear it, and bill you for the work if you do not. Elsewhere on the Shore the clocks are real: Chincoteague gives you three hours, Onancock six. Across the bridge-tunnel, Norfolk and Hampton are three hours and Virginia Beach six.
The Yarbo hardware lists at $4,999 for snow only, or $7,199 for the mow-and-snow combination. Given how little snow falls here, the combination is usually the only version that makes financial sense, and we will say so on the call rather than after the install.
No. We checked the state incentive database, Virginia Energy Sense, Dominion’s programs and the federal credits, and there is nothing that applies to electric or battery outdoor power equipment. A 2026 law lets localities tax electric landscaping equipment at a lower business rate, but that is not a consumer rebate and it does not mention snow blowers.
