Arizona Ground Snow Load by County and City

Arizona sets no ground snow load at state level, so every figure comes from a county or city building department. Eleven figures from Arizona counties and cities are set out below, each with the ordinance or code amendment it was printed in. 19 states work this way, which is why a search for one Arizona figure comes back with several different answers from several different pages, all of them correct for the place they were written for. eleven Arizona figures, running from 0 at City of Bullhead City to 75 at Coconino County, every one of them quoted from the document it was printed in. Nationally 235 figures were read across 33 states.

The county board of supervisors for unincorporated land, and the city or town for land inside it: Arizona has no statewide building code for private construction, so each county and municipality adopts and fills in its own. In its own words: “A municipality may enact the provisions of a code or public record theretofore in existence without setting forth the provisions, but the adopting ordinance shall be published in full.”

Part of Arizona is a case study area, meaning the published document expressly declines to give those places a figure and sends the designer back to the local building department for one. 16 states carry a rule like this, and it is the commonest reason a search for a single number comes back empty. The rule reads: “Ground Snow Load – Coconino County Ground Snow Loads are established through a Case Study (CS) and references the "Ground Snow Load Case Study for Coconino County". ... Coconino County Above 8000 Design according to accepted engineering practice”

The figure moves with elevation in Arizona, which is the hardest case for a reader: two houses a mile apart and a thousand feet apart take different numbers, and 13 states are keyed this way. The published Arizona figures run from 0 to 75.

A ground snow load is a weight per unit area and not a depth, and the two are joined only by the density of the snow on the day, which is why the published documents give the load and leave the depth out. Wet spring snow and dry January snow of the same depth are different weights on the same roof. The county board of supervisors for unincorporated land, and the city or town for land inside it works in loads for that reason, and so does every figure set out below.

A Arizona figure for an address the documents below do not cover comes from The county board of supervisors for unincorporated land, and the city or town for land inside it. The document behind it is Arizona Revised Statutes Section 11-861, Adoption of codes by reference, published by Arizona State Legislature, read on September 23, 2026. It establishes the point this way: “In any county that has adopted zoning pursuant to this chapter, the board of supervisors may adopt and enforce, for the unincorporated areas of the county so zoned, a building code and other related codes to regulate the quality, type of material and workmanship of all aspects of construction of buildings or structures, except that the board may authorize that areas zoned rural or unclassified may be exempt from the provisions of the code adopted.”

14 of 50: Connecticut, Indiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Montana, New Hampshire, New Jersey, North Carolina, Rhode Island, Utah, Vermont, Wisconsin. The other 36 split into 17 that adopt the national code without a snow amendment and 19 that leave every figure to a county or city building department. That is the single most useful fact about this subject and no one state's own website carries it.