Indiana Ground Snow Load by County and Town

Indiana publishes its own table of ground snow loads, TABLE R301.2(1) CLIMATIC AND GEOGRAPHIC DESIGN CRITERIA, 675 IAC 14-4.4-5, through Fire Prevention and Building Safety Commission. nine of its published figures are set out below with the row each was read from. Only 14 states out of 50 publish anything of their own like it; the other 36 send a reader either to the national code or to a county counter. nine Indiana figures, running from 20 (PSF) at Vanderburgh to 30 (PSF) at Elkhart, every one of them quoted from the document it was printed in. Nationally 235 figures were read across 33 states.

Fire Prevention and Building Safety Commission: the commission's own rule replaces the national table with a ninety two county Indiana table, so the county a reader is in settles the figure. In its own words: “Sec. 5. Delete TABLE R301.2(1) and the corresponding footnotes and substitute to read as follows:”

The figure is keyed to the county in Indiana, as it is in 21 states, so the county line rather than the town line is what changes the answer. The published Indiana figures run from 20 (PSF) to 30 (PSF).

Fire Prevention and Building Safety Commission adopts 2020 Indiana Residential Code, 675 IAC 14-4.4 (2020 Indiana Residential Code, incorporating the 2018 International Residential Code for One and Two Family Dwellings). Indiana amended it rather than adopting it whole, and 22 states have done the same. The adopting rule reads: “Sec. 1. (a) That certain document being titled the 2018 International Residential Code for One and Two Family Dwellings, first printing August 2017, published by the International Code Council, 500 New Jersey Avenue NW, Sixth Floor, Washington, D.C. 20001-2070, is hereby incorporated by reference as if fully set out in this rule save and except those revisions made in this rule. (b) This rule shall be known as the 2020 Indiana Residential Code.”

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. Fire Prevention and Building Safety Commission works in loads for that reason, and so does every figure set out below.

The Indiana document itself is the place to look a town up, and what it prints is applied by Fire Prevention and Building Safety Commission. The document behind it is TABLE R301.2(1) CLIMATIC AND GEOGRAPHIC DESIGN CRITERIA, 675 IAC 14-4.4-5, published by Fire Prevention and Building Safety Commission, read on September 23, 2026. It establishes the point this way: “Sec. 5. Delete TABLE R301.2(1) and the corresponding footnotes and substitute to read as follows: TABLE R301.2(1) CLIMATIC AND GEOGRAPHIC DESIGN CRITERIA No. County Wind Speed a (MPH) Seismic Design Category b Ground Snow (PSF) Found- ation c ...”

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.