Delaware Ground Snow Load by County and City

Delaware sets no ground snow load at state level, so every figure comes from a county or city building department. Seven figures from Delaware 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 Delaware figure comes back with several different answers from several different pages, all of them correct for the place they were written for. seven Delaware figures, running from 20 at City of Newark to 25 pounds per square foot at City of Delaware City, every one of them quoted from the document it was printed in. Nationally 235 figures were read across 33 states.

The county or municipal building department where the work is: Delaware has no statewide building code, so the county or the town writes the number into its own adopted code. In its own words: “Except as herein noted, county and municipal building and plumbing codes shall meet the most recent version of the International Code Council (ICC), International Energy Conservation Code (IECC) within 12 months of adoption by the Delaware Energy Office.”

The figure is keyed to the county in Delaware, as it is in 21 states, so the county line rather than the town line is what changes the answer. The published Delaware figures run from 20 to 25 pounds per square foot.

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 or municipal building department where the work is works in loads for that reason, and so does every figure set out below.

A Delaware figure for an address the documents below do not cover comes from the county or municipal building department where the work is. The document behind it is CHAPTER 76. County or Municipal Building, Plumbing, Electrical and Other Codes, published by Delaware General Assembly, read on September 23, 2026. It establishes the point this way: “The Levy Court of Kent County and the County Councils of New Castle County and Sussex County may adopt and enforce building codes, plumbing codes, electrical codes or other similar codes.”

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.