I'm not sure I've heard a more apocalyptic sound than a snowblower kicking up a big racket, but hidden around a corner of a nearby house: Lots of weird, loud sounds coming from no obvious nearby source. Made all the louder and weirder by the deep hush from all that fractally sound-absorbent fresh snow all round.
All the harder to pinpoint because every combination of surroundings, snow, and snowblower is unique. The low snowplow rumble, on the other hand, is as familiar as it is comforting, even if I can't always tell exactly what's getting cleared: Street, sidewalk, or driveway, and if driveway, mine, or a neighbor's? A quick enough glance out the window is often enough to know which is cleared, and which now has a new, or at least deeper, ridge of snow blocking it.
Compared to snowblowers, lawnmowers and leaf-blowers just don't seem so unsettling. The only temperate-weather power equipment I can think of that compares is the psychotic shriek of a table saw or circular saw under load a half-block down and one street over.
The silence with which the blower contends is one of winter's underappreciated delights, as subtle as a single champagne bubble, easy to disregard or forget, but ever so much more precious for being so rare and infrequent.