Nebraska adopts the 2018 International Residential Code as its state building code but publishes no frost depth number or table of its own, so the depth that governs your footing is the one your county, city or village has set in its own adopted code.
Nebraska leaves the frost line depth to the local building department, which is where the number for an address comes from.
(2) A local building or construction code shall be deemed to conform generally with the state building code if it: (a) Adopts a special or differing building standard by amending, modifying, or deleting any portion of the state building code in order to reduce unnecessary costs of construction, increase safety, durability, or efficiency, establish best building or construction practices within the county, city, or village, or address special local conditions within the county, city, or villageNebraska Revised Statute 71-6406, County, city, or village; building code; adopt; amend; enforce; copy; fees, Nebraska Legislature, read September 22, 2026. Read it at the source
That makes the building department issuing the permit the office with the number, and it is a short call: the counter gives the depth for the address, and the same call settles whether a deck footing or a slab edge needs a footing inspection before the concrete goes in. What Nebraska does publish is below, and it is worth having in hand first.
The air freezing index is the quantity the frost provisions of the model codes are written on: add up how far each day’s mean temperature fell below freezing over a winter, in degree days, and take the deepest run the winter managed. It measures how much cold the ground had to absorb, which is why it is the honest way to set one place beside another. Omaha is the coldest of the 3 cities on the record in Nebraska.
697degree days
average freezing index a winter
Omaha Eppley Airfield
| City | State | Freezing index | Once a century | Nights below freezing |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Omaha | Nebraska | 697 | 1,627 | 137 |
| North Platte | Nebraska | 681 | 1,676 | 175 |
| Scottsbluff | Nebraska | 539 | 1,330 | 172 |
Computed from NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, Global Historical Climatology Network daily temperature records for each station, from 1951 onward. These are measurements of winter, not depths.
Only a handful of states answer with one number for the whole state, and they are the only codes that can be set beside each other directly. Ranked by the freezing index at their own reference cities, with Nebraska marked at 639 degree days for comparison against what those codes settled on:
Left to right, the mildest winters to the hardest. The figure on the right is what that state wrote into its code.
The nearest by winter are Connecticut at 42 inches, Massachusetts at 4 feet and Michigan at 42 inches. That is a reading of other states’ codes rather than a depth for an address in Nebraska: soil, drainage, snow cover and local amendments all move the figure, and the building department issuing the permit is the office whose number binds.
Nebraska code read September 22, 2026 from Nebraska Revised Statute 71-6406, County, city, or village; building code; adopt; amend; enforce; copy; fees, Nebraska Legislature. Codes are amended and a local amendment can be deeper than the state figure, so the building department issuing the permit has the number that binds. Every state is on the frost line depth hub.