Susan Engel, head of the lawn and garden department at Eldredge Lumber & Hardware’s store in York, was swapping out road salt for lawn fertilizer last week.

“But you can’t put it too far away,” she said of the leftover salt, shovels and other snow-related inventory.

Customers could be heading somewhere like Rangeley, Engel said, where it might be snowing. And there are always those who are somehow unprepared for late-season storms.

“People forget where they put their shovel, or they broke it,” she said.

In Portland, the average date of the season’s last snowfall of more than an inch is March 31, according to the National Weather Service in Gray. It’s April 4 in Bangor, but the cities share a date for record final snowfall, May 11, though in different years (1945 in Portland and 1963 in Bangor).

If you want to play it safe, you’ll wait until after Mother’s Day to stow away your shovel and take your ice scraper out of your car. But if you’re the type of person who can’t wait to cross things off your to-do list, you’ll probably be OK within the next couple weeks.

Justin Neely, owner of Scarborough-based Maine Snow Solutions, works with a hard date: April 15.

That’s when the contracts end for his 100 or so commercial and residential snow-removal clients in Greater Portland, and he takes the plows off his trucks right away. He knows it’s not a foolproof plan.

“We’ve definitely had to scramble and put plows back on,” he said.

The risk is low enough, however, that Neely feels comfortable transitioning to his landscaping business after the second week of April — but no sooner.

“April is a winter month,” he said. “We typically see some sort of winter event in April.”

Meteorologists, like Chris Norcross at the National Weather Service office in Caribou, have a better read on weather patterns than the rest of us. He has no set routine for transitioning to spring, but takes it year by year.

“We’ve had frost into mid to late May,” he said.

Jessica Daggett of Harrison keeps a shovel on her porch until May, somewhat out of superstition.

“It’s the whole ‘jinx it’ thing,” she said. “If I put the shovel away, it’s going to snow.”

Her ice scraper and snow brush, however, never leave her car. They just get moved from the passenger seat to the “way back,” even after she’s swapped out all her winter gear, like extra hats and mittens, for beach towels and other summer supplies.

“You never know,” she said. “You just got to be ready for it.”

Engel, from the hardware store, who grew up in Minnesota, keeps a telescopic shovel in her car six months of the year. It’s amazing the different types of shovels you could put to use, she said, pointing out that any snow we get this late in the season is likely to be really heavy, requiring a light shovel that won’t add to the weight.

If you don’t have one of those on hand, rather than wondering if you can put your shovel away, it might be time to think about buying a new one.