Myths You'll Hear

Where you'll hear it: OPEI white papers, manufacturer-funded studies, landscaping trade groups testifying at hearings.

Reality: Modern commercial battery blowers from EGO, Stihl, Greenworks Commercial, Husqvarna, and Makita match or exceed the air volume (CFM) and air speed (MPH) of the gas blowers they replace. The 600+ CFM commercial backpack class — the workhorse of fall cleanup — is fully covered by current battery models.

The towns that have already passed full year-round bans didn't see service collapse. Crews kept showing up. Lawns kept getting cleaned. If electric couldn't do the job, you'd see one of these towns reverse course. None has.

Where you'll hear it: Crew owners who have only used one battery on one machine.

Reality: Professional electric crews don't run a single battery — they run packs. Standard practice is two to three swappable batteries per blower with a truck-mounted or trailer-mounted charger that turns over packs throughout the day. Backpack systems on commercial-grade equipment run roughly four to six hours of actual blower-on time per pack.

A crew with a properly spec'd battery system has more usable runtime than a gas crew, because they aren't stopping to refuel, mix two-stroke oil, or unjam carburetors.

Where you'll hear it: Most often as a reason to delay — "let's revisit in five years."

Reality: Commercial battery landscape equipment has been on the market for more than a decade. California's CARB regulation (AB 1346) phased gas small-off-road-engine sales out starting in 2024. Hundreds of US municipalities — including Washington DC, Burlington VT, Brookline MA, and a growing list of towns nationwide — operate under full bans today. The same manufacturers that make gas blowers have built out commercial battery lines because that's where the market is going.

"Not ready yet" is what the industry says in every jurisdiction. It's been "not ready yet" for fifteen years.

Where you'll hear it: A regional spin on Myth 3.

Reality: Lithium-ion battery performance does drop modestly in cold temperatures, which is why commercial crews keep packs in heated trucks and rotate them. It's the same workflow that landscaping crews already use for cordless drills, chainsaws, and hedge trimmers — none of which are controversial.

The towns running ban-compliant fall cleanups with electric equipment include Brookline, MA and Burlington, VT — Northeast cold, heavy leaf load. The cold-weather objection survives only as long as nobody checks who's already doing this.

Where you'll hear it: The headline claim in nearly every industry letter campaign.

Reality: It hasn't happened anywhere. Not in DC, not in California, not in any of the towns with full bans. Landscaping companies in those jurisdictions are still operating, still hiring, and many have grown. The work doesn't disappear when the equipment changes — lawns still need mowing, leaves still need clearing.

Industry groups have predicted business collapse before every ban. Then the ban passes, and a year later they predict it for the next town. The pattern is the prediction; the collapse never arrives.

Where you'll hear it: Trade-group testimony pointing to upfront sticker prices.

Reality: The upfront cost of a commercial battery blower plus a battery pack is now comparable to a commercial gas blower. The total cost of ownership over five years is meaningfully lower, because electric equipment eliminates fuel, two-stroke oil, spark plugs, air filters, carburetor cleanings, and engine rebuilds. Run the math yourself with the cost calculator.

New York's pending Electric Landscaping Equipment Rebate Program (S5853A / A2657A) — which passed both chambers in April 2026 and is awaiting Governor Hochul's signature — would provide point-of-sale rebates that close any remaining gap. California's existing CORE program (the model) has issued tens of millions of dollars in rebates for exactly this transition, with $30M earmarked specifically for small-business and sole-proprietor landscapers.

Where you'll hear it: Companion to Myth 6.

Reality: In every ban jurisdiction studied, residential landscaping prices have tracked normal market trends, not the imagined ban-driven spike. Fuel savings on the operator side offset the equipment transition. Some companies have used the switch as a marketing differentiator and charged a small premium for "all-electric" service — but that's a market choice, not a forced cost.

Where you'll hear it: Increasingly the favored industry talking point because it sounds like an equity argument.

Reality: This argument is almost always advanced by industry lobbyists, not by the workers themselves. The people most harmed by gas-powered leaf blowers are the workers running them — disproportionately immigrant, often without OSHA-grade hearing or respiratory protection, exposed to 100+ dB noise and direct two-stroke exhaust at face level for hours a day. NIOSH's recommended exposure limit is 85 dB(A) over an 8-hour shift; commercial backpack gas blowers spec at 95–106 dB(A) at the operator's ear (see Husqvarna 580BTS / Stihl BR 800 spec sheets).

A ban improves working conditions. Transition periods (one to two years is standard) and rebate programs are specifically designed to cushion small operators during the switch. When you hear this argument from someone who is not themselves a landscaping worker, ask who's funding the message.

Where you'll hear it: Often paired with Myth 5.

Reality: Electric crews need workers just as much as gas crews do. The labor is the same: mowing, edging, blowing, hauling. If anything, the lighter weight and lower noise of battery equipment makes the work less physically punishing and easier to staff.

The actual occupational risk to landscaping workers is the gas equipment itself — the noise exposure, the carcinogen-laden two-stroke exhaust, the back strain from heavy backpack engines. The "save the jobs" framing has it backwards.

Where you'll hear it: Polished industry-funded lifecycle "studies" that compare a brand-new battery pack to a single hour of gas use.

Reality: Lifecycle analyses that account for the full useful life of the equipment — using EPA, Argonne National Laboratory, and CARB methodologies — show that commercial gas blowers are dramatically worse than electric across every emission category. The reason is the two-stroke engine.

Two-stroke engines burn a mixture of oil and gasoline and vent exhaust without a catalytic converter. Up to a third of the fuel passes through unburned, released as an aerosol of benzene, formaldehyde, 1,3-butadiene, and fine particulate matter. CARB calculated that one hour of commercial gas leaf blower operation emits as much smog-forming pollution as driving a new light-duty passenger car about 1,100 miles — the distance from Los Angeles to Denver.

A single season of commercial gas blower use produces more lifecycle emissions than the manufacturing footprint of the battery packs that would replace it.

Where you'll hear it: A favorite of online debate, less often at hearings.

Reality: Even on a hypothetical 100% coal-fired grid — which no US grid is — electric equipment beats two-stroke gas on every emission metric, because power plants have emission controls and two-stroke engines do not. New York's grid is roughly half zero-carbon today (NYISO Power Trends 2025), and that share grows annually.

The other half of the answer is location. Power plant emissions go up a stack and disperse. Gas blower emissions go directly into the operator's lungs and the windows of the homes next door. Even if the totals were equal — and they aren't — the local exposure profile is fundamentally different.

Where you'll hear it: As a closer when other arguments fail.

Reality: Commercial battery packs are recycled at high rates through manufacturer take-back programs and Call2Recycle drop-off points. The federal Universal Waste Rule classifies lithium-ion batteries as recyclable; commercial-grade packs in particular have strong economic incentives for recovery (lithium, cobalt, nickel).

Compare that to two-stroke fuel: 100% combusted into the air, with no recovery possible.

Where you'll hear it: A broader version of Myth 10, usually pointed at lithium and cobalt — "the mining for these batteries is worse than the gas they replace." It's the same talking point used against electric cars, recycled for lawn equipment.

Reality: It rests on a comparison the gas side never makes honestly, because fossil fuel is mined and extracted too — on a scale that dwarfs everything else. The International Energy Agency describes the clean-energy shift as moving "from a fuel-intensive to a material-intensive energy system." The difference is what happens next: the minerals in a battery are a durable, recoverable component of the equipment, while the gasoline in a two-stroke engine is burned once and gone — which is why it has to be re-mined, re-refined, and re-bought forever. As the IEA puts it, "the combustion of oil means that new supply is essential to the continuous operation of oil-using assets … minerals are a component of infrastructure, with the potential to be recovered and recycled."

The tonnage isn't close. Over its life, an average fossil-fuel car burns the equivalent of a stack of oil barrels 25 stories high; with recycling, the battery metals never recovered amount to roughly a football's worth (International Council on Clean Transportation). A cordless leaf blower's pack is a tiny fraction of even that. And known global reserves of lithium, nickel, and cobalt far exceed what the entire EV transition needs — battery demand reaches only 8–14% of proven reserves by 2035. Lithium in particular is abundant and spread across dozens of countries on every inhabited continent, per the U.S. Geological Survey.

The material people worry about most is being designed out. Cobalt — the genuinely scarce, ethically fraught one, concentrated in the Democratic Republic of the Congo — is being replaced by cobalt-free lithium-iron-phosphate (LFP) chemistry, which now makes up a large and growing share of the batteries built worldwide (IEA Global EV Outlook 2025).

None of this makes battery mining harmless. It isn't — lithium extraction uses water, and cobalt mining has documented human-rights problems that deserve real scrutiny and reform. But it is a fraction of the harm of the fossil extraction it replaces, the materials are recovered and reused instead of burned into the air, and the industry is actively shifting to cleaner, more abundant inputs. "What about the mining?" is a fair question — it just has a far worse answer for gasoline than for batteries.

Where you'll hear it: From the same officials who enforce noise ordinances against barking dogs and amplified music every weekend.

Reality: A full year-round ban is the easiest noise-equipment regulation to enforce, because gas blowers are identifiable by sound alone. There's no time-window dispute, no seasonal calendar, no equipment-classification gray area. If the code officer hears a gas blower, it's a violation.

Ban towns confirm this in practice. Most use a complaint-driven model with first-offense warnings, escalating to fines. Compliance settles in within the first season.

Where you'll hear it: Often as a budget objection.

Reality: The opposite happens. Towns report a complaint spike during the first transition season, followed by a steep drop-off as compliance becomes the norm. The towns that didn't pass full bans — that tried to live with seasonal or hours-restricted partial measures — are the ones whose code officers are still drowning in disputes about which hour, which day, and which type of blower.

A clear rule generates fewer complaints over time, not more.

Where you'll hear it: Often offered as a "compromise" — sometimes by industry, sometimes by board members trying to avoid a vote. Where a seasonal rule already exists, you'll hear the strongest version: "We already compromised — there's quiet all summer. This new law only strips out fall, the one season the equipment is actually needed."

Reality: The seasonal rule protects the wrong season. Blower use is heaviest and longest in spring and fall — the typical seasonal rule bans blowers in the lightest-use months and permits them exactly when crews run them for hours a day. A year-round rule doesn't add a new restriction; it fixes a backwards one.

Health doesn't follow a calendar. Two-stroke exhaust is a carcinogen in October as much as in July, and fall is peak outdoor exposure — kids walking to school, windows open, leaf piles full of aerosolized mold.

Fall on battery power is not a theory. Larchmont, Mamaroneck, Bronxville, Bedford, and Pelham Manor run full year-round bans and complete their fall cleanups on electric equipment in exactly this weather.

Partial restrictions also fail on their own terms. They preserve gas demand, which is why industry groups support them when a full ban is on the table:

Enforcement is harder, not easier. Officers have to know the time, the season, and the equipment type for every complaint.

The harm concentrates. Crews run gas blowers harder during the "allowed" hours, so the noise and exhaust dose stays roughly the same.

Compliance drops. Crews working across multiple towns can't track which town allows what on which day.

Towns that started with seasonal restrictions keep upgrading them to full year-round bans — the partial measure proves the concept, then gets replaced by the rule that actually works.

Where you'll hear it: Letters to the editor, angry public-comment speakers.

Reality: Local regulation of noise, nuisance, and equipment that harms public health is a century-old core function of municipal government. Towns regulate fireworks, amplified sound, construction hours, idling trucks, and burning leaves on the same legal basis. Gas-powered leaf blower restrictions sit squarely within home-rule authority, and hundreds of US towns have passed them without successful legal challenge.

If your town can pass a noise ordinance against barking dogs, it can pass one against gas blowers.

Where you'll hear it: A class-framing inversion of Myth 8.

Reality: The biggest beneficiaries of a ban are the people exposed to gas blowers most often: the workers operating them, the elderly residents who can't escape the noise, asthmatic children, and people working from home in dense neighborhoods. NIOSH noise-exposure data and CARB two-stroke emissions modeling converge on the same conclusion — the harm falls hardest on people with the least ability to opt out.

Wealthy homeowners can install soundproof windows. Renters and outdoor workers cannot.

Where you'll hear it: Sympathetic-sounding board members.

Reality: New York has had a sale-ban bill (A2114) and a seasonal use-ban bill (S424) sitting in committee for years with no scheduled floor vote. Even if both passed tomorrow, a state sale ban does not restrict use of existing equipment — landscapers could keep running their current gas blowers indefinitely. The pending rebate program (S5853A / A2657A) doesn't restrict anything; it only funds replacement.

Local use bans are the only mechanism that addresses current harm to current residents. The towns with full bans acted without waiting for the state.

Where you'll hear it: A local variant of Myth 19.

Reality: Waiting on the county is open-ended — where anything is on the table at all, it has no scheduled vote and no deadline. Meanwhile, the towns that decided not to wait now share working enforcement, real data, and quieter neighborhoods.

Where you'll hear it: A favored stalling tactic when the substantive arguments have run out.

Reality: The studies exist. CARB has published detailed two-stroke emissions modeling. NIOSH has published worker noise-exposure data. Manufacturer spec sheets (Husqvarna and Stihl flagship gas vs. battery comparison) make the equipment-class case directly. Dozens of municipal post-ban reviews are publicly available. The peer-reviewed literature on two-stroke engine emissions goes back decades.

What "more study" usually means is: study until the political will fades. Your town has more than enough data to act.

Where you'll hear it: When the conversation isn't going well for the gas side.

Reality: Gas-powered leaf blowers are uniquely bad on three dimensions simultaneously:

Sustained 100+ dB noise for extended periods — louder than a chainsaw, well above the threshold for hearing damage.

Two-stroke uncontrolled emissions — no catalytic converter, roughly a third of fuel released as an unburned aerosol of carcinogens.

Resuspension of ground-level particulate — pesticide residues, animal waste, mold spores, and heavy metals blown back into the air.

No other common piece of consumer equipment combines all three. Cars have catalytic converters and run intermittently in traffic. Mowers don't kick up the same particulate plume. Construction is regulated by hour and by permit. Leaf blowers run for hours, in residential neighborhoods, with no exhaust controls and no permitting process.

That's why leaf blowers are the natural starting point. Many ban towns subsequently expand to other gas landscape equipment — but that's a sequence, not an argument against acting on blowers first.

Where you'll hear it: Increasingly common as battery-fire headlines rise — and a featured line in the current opposition letter campaign.

Reality: The lithium-fire stories in the news are overwhelmingly uncertified e-bike, e-scooter, and hoverboard packs and loose cells bought online — not the sealed, certified, battery-management-protected packs that commercial landscape tools use. Commercial-grade packs from EGO, Stihl, Husqvarna, and Makita ship with thermal cutoffs and management systems that a gas can and a jug of two-stroke mix simply don't have. The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission's battery-fire data is dominated by that cheap micromobility category, not power-tool packs.

Meanwhile, every gas crew already hauls and hand-pours gasoline blended with two-stroke oil — a flammable liquid, on the truck, every working day. Removing two-stroke equipment takes a fuel-fire source off the street; it doesn't add one. And spent packs are recycled, not dumped (see Myth 12).

Where you'll hear it: Large-lot, heavily-wooded homeowners; a sustainability-flavored fairness inversion.

Reality: Leaf volume is a question of workflow, not fuel. A big-canopy property is cleared with rakes, mulching mowers, and battery blowers with rotated packs — the same way crews already handle large wooded lots in the towns running full year-round bans. Nothing about a mature oak requires a two-stroke engine to manage its leaves.

The environmental framing actually points the other way. Mulching leaves in place returns nutrients to the soil and feeds the very trees in question, while two-stroke exhaust degrades the air around them. On a wooded lot, the greener move is to drop the two-stroke, not defend it.

Where you'll hear it: An equity-framed appeal, and a favored line in the opposition letter campaign.

Reality: A ban changes a landscaper's equipment, not whether they show up. Crews keep servicing the same clients with electric tools — no senior loses their landscaping because of an engine type. And in the ban jurisdictions studied, residential prices tracked normal market trends rather than the imagined spike (see Myth 7). New York's pending Electric Landscaping Equipment Rebate Program (A2657A / S5853A) is designed to keep the operator's cost from being passed down.

The framing also inverts who is actually vulnerable. A homebound elderly resident or an immunocompromised neighbor can't leave when a gas blower runs under the window for an hour — they absorb the full noise and exhaust dose with no way to opt out. The people said to be harmed by a ban are among those it most protects.

Where you'll hear it: Often raised just before a vote, as a public-safety worry.

Reality: This answers a restriction nobody proposes. Serious gas-blower ordinances exempt storm response, emergencies, public-safety work, and utility crews — the rule targets routine weekly cleanup, not clearing a fallen limb after a nor'easter. The emergency scenario and the equipment being restricted are simply not the same thing.

On top of that, storm and downed-tree work is chainsaw-and-chipper work, not leaf-blower work. The objection describes a problem the ban doesn't create.

Where you'll hear it: A hypocrisy charge aimed at decision-makers personally — a headline reason in the opposition letter campaign.

Reality: It's usually true today — and it's an argument for the town to go first, not to do nothing. Well-drafted ordinances make the public sector lead: the local government stops buying new gas equipment and brings its own grounds contractors into compliance on the same timeline as everyone else. "You do it too" is answered by "and we're the first to stop."

Scope matters too: seasonal municipal curbside leaf collection with industrial vacuum equipment is a different operation from a crew running a backpack blower down a residential block for hours a day. The fix is one standard for everyone, government included — not a permanent carve-out that protects the worst residential exposure.

Where you'll hear it: A tidy applause line — "where does it end?" — and the closing reason in the opposition letter campaign.

Reality: There's a clear, principled line here, not a slope. Two-stroke gas blowers are the uniquely bad case on three axes at once — sustained 100+ dB low-frequency noise, uncontrolled two-stroke exhaust (roughly a third of the fuel vented unburned), and a mature, drop-in electric replacement that already exists. The other examples fail that test: cars are a necessity with no local substitute, four-stroke mowers run cleaner and closer to the ground, snow blowers run a handful of times a year.

The track record settles it. Hundreds of US towns have restricted gas leaf blowers; none slid into banning cars. Targeting the worst tool that already has a clean alternative is the opposite of an open-ended slope. (This is the flip side of Myth 22: that one says "everything else is just as bad," this one says "everything else is next" — same answer, drawn from the same uniquely-bad profile.)

Where you'll hear it: Scare messaging aimed at homeowners who don't follow the issue — fine amounts and "each day a separate offense" quoted out of context.

Reality: Well-drafted ordinances are complaint-driven and warning-first — the first step is a written warning, not a fine. In towns that have adopted bans, the pattern is a brief complaint spike, warnings, then compliance; fines are rare.

Owner responsibility isn't a new legal theory. You're already responsible for amplified sound and construction-hours noise from your property. This is the standard rule, not a new one.

You're in full control of your exposure. Hire an electric-equipped crew and there is nothing to warn about. Contractors are liable too, which is exactly why reputable crews switch.

Where you'll hear it: An attempt to shrink broad support down to a fringe.

Reality: The support is broad and on the record: petition signatures, resident sign-ups, and a growing roster of neighboring towns that have already acted — this is the regional direction of travel, not a fringe project.

The payoff isn't a special-interest win, it's a shared one. Quieter streets and cleaner air reach every household in town, whether or not anyone signed a petition. A noise- and pollution-free neighborhood is the kind of benefit nobody has to opt into — it's just there, for everyone, every day.

If you're looking for the organized, funded voice in this debate, it isn't your neighbors — the opposing talking points trace back to the equipment industry's trade group.

Where you'll hear it: Opponents getting ready to dismiss a likely loss as unfair, and pressure on boards to "look balanced" by putting off a vote.

Reality: A lopsided inbox shows where residents stand — it doesn't show a rigged process. Counting and reporting public letters is exactly what open, careful government looks like, and both sides' letters are in the record and being weighed.

The remedy for "more voices should be heard" is to send yours. That is the process working, not failing.

Where you'll hear it: A green-sounding reason to wait — genuinely good policy offered as a substitute for a rule right now.

Reality: Yes-and, not either-or. Meadows and native plantings are a change that takes a decade; the ban stops real harm this season. They run on different clocks and don't compete — even yards converted to natives still get their leaves managed.

Plant the meadows and retire the two-stroke: one is a ten-year vision, the other protects lungs this fall.

Where you'll hear it: Often from the board itself — a past voluntary program cited as the resolution, closing the door before debate opens.

Reality: The exchange deserves credit — and it makes our case. A residential swap program never touches the biggest source of noise and exhaust: commercial crews running gas equipment hours a day.

Ask for the participation numbers. Voluntary sign-ups are a small slice of the equipment out there, they don't require anything of anyone, and the program ends when the money does.

And the town wouldn't have spent money on an exchange if the problem weren't real — so the question isn't whether the harm exists, it's whether a voluntary program for homeowners was enough to fix it. The exchange proved this community is ready to switch; the ordinance finishes the job.

Where you'll hear it: A newer twist on the battery attacks, sometimes with a photo of a generator on a landscaper's trailer. One referendum campaign put it this way: electric blowers "will likely require gas-powered generators to re-charge!"

Reality: Notice the word "likely" — it's a prediction, not something that actually happens. Commercial crews charge their batteries overnight at the shop on ordinary electric service and carry enough packs for the day's work, the same way contractors have handled cordless drills and saws for a decade. In the towns that have already made the switch — including year-round-ban towns that complete entire fall cleanups on battery equipment — generator-charging is not how crews operate.

And even the rare worst case improves on what it replaces: a modern generator idling at the curb burns far cleaner and runs far quieter than a two-stroke engine held at head height. The claim asks you to reject a real improvement because someone might partially undo it — but the exhaust at your window and the roar through your walls come from the blower, and that's what changes. (On where the electricity comes from, see Myth 11; on whether batteries last the workday, see Myth 2.)

Where you'll hear it: Almost always against a seasonal proposal. A Long Island campaign opposing part-year restrictions put it this way: homeowners and landscaping companies "could essentially be expected to own and maintain TWO sets of equipment — battery-powered blowers AND gas-powered blowers — just to maintain properties throughout the year."

Reality: That is an accurate description of what a part-year rule does — and it is the best argument anyone has made for going year-round instead. A seasonal rule leaves gas legal for part of the calendar, so nobody can retire the gas equipment. You buy battery gear for the restricted months and keep paying for fuel, mixing oil, tune-ups, carburetors, and eventual engine replacement for the rest. Two fleets, two maintenance programs, permanently.

A year-round rule with a dated phase-in is the version that ends the double cost: one set of equipment, bought once, on a schedule a business can plan around. The gas machines actually leave the fleet instead of riding in the truck waiting for October. And the fleet that remains is the cheaper one to run — no gasoline, no mixing oil, no spark plugs, no engine rebuilds. Run the numbers side by side →

So the objection deserves a plain answer rather than a denial: if owning two sets of equipment is the problem, the fix is a clear end date for gas, not a rule that keeps both sets in service indefinitely. (On the related claim that seasonal limits are the reasonable middle ground, see Myth 16.)

Where you'll hear it: As a sympathetic hypothetical, usually aimed at a seasonal rule: you close on a house in midsummer that has not been maintained in years, and the crew you hire cannot bring gas blowers.

Reality: A neglected-property cleanup is barely a blower job at all. Cutting back overgrowth, clearing brush, dethatching, re-edging beds, hauling debris — that is mowers, string trimmers, chainsaws, rakes, tarps, and a truck, and none of it is equipment a leaf blower ban covers. The blower does the last few minutes of the job, clearing the hard surfaces once the debris is out, and a commercial battery backpack does that work. A ban does not stop the cleanup; it changes one tool in it.

It is also worth noticing which kind of rule creates the hypothetical. The scenario only bites because a seasonal law makes the date matter — being stranded in a "restricted window" is a calendar problem, not a capability problem. Under a year-round standard there is no window to be stranded in: professional crews carry electric because that is simply what they run, in July and in November alike.

And genuine one-offs are already handled. Ban ordinances carve out storm and emergency cleanup, and a board that wants a valve for documented one-time property remediation can write a short-term permit for it — a narrow, checkable exception, very different from leaving gas legal for five months a year for every routine visit in town.

Where you'll hear it: Against seasonal cutoff dates. One campaign framed it as "Mother Nature doesn't follow the Town's calendar": if rain, snow, and freezing weather push a fall cleanup past the cutoff date, does finishing the job the following week become a violation?

Reality: It is a real flaw — in seasonal rules. Every date boundary creates a wrong-side-of-the-date problem, and that is one more reason a part-year law is the harder one to live under, not the gentler one. A year-round standard has no boundary to be caught on: the equipment you used in October is the equipment you use in January.

Enforcement does not work the way the scenario imagines, either. Ban towns act on complaints, not calendars, and start with a warning rather than a fine, so a delayed cleanup on the first clear day is a conversation at worst. (On who is actually liable and what a first offense costs, see Myth 29.)

And a weather-delayed cleanup is the easy job for electric, not the hard one: leaves that have sat through a storm are scattered, already broken down, and usually spread over part of a yard rather than all of it. The genuinely hard case — heavy, wet leaves matted into the turf — is a mower-and-rake job no matter what engine is pushing air at it.