Minnesota Ground Snow Load by County and Town

Minnesota publishes its own table of ground snow loads, 1303.1700 GROUND SNOW LOAD, through Minnesota Administrative Rules, Office of the Revisor of Statutes (Minnesota State Building Code). eight 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. eight Minnesota figures, running from 50 pounds per square foot at all other counties to 60 pounds per square foot at Cook, every one of them quoted from the document it was printed in. Nationally 235 figures were read across 33 states.

Minnesota Department of Labor and Industry, Construction Codes and Licensing Division: the state rule sets the value; the municipality that has adopted the State Building Code administers it. In its own words: “The 2018 IRC chapters 2 to 10, 44, section P2904 of chapter 29, Appendix K, and Appendix Q shall be administered by any municipality that has adopted the Minnesota State Building Code, except as qualified by the applicable provisions in Minnesota Rules, chapter 1300, and as amended by this chapter.”

The figure is keyed to the county in Minnesota, as it is in 21 states, so the county line rather than the town line is what changes the answer. The published Minnesota figures run from 50 pounds per square foot to 60 pounds per square foot.

Minnesota Department of Labor and Industry, Office of the Revisor of Statutes (Minnesota Rules, chapter 1309) adopts International Residential Code (IRC) (2018 edition). Minnesota amended it rather than adopting it whole, and 22 states have done the same. The adopting rule reads: “The 2018 edition of the International Residential Code ("IRC") as promulgated by the International Code Council, Inc. ("ICC"), Washington, D.C., is incorporated by reference and made part of the Minnesota State Building Code except as qualified by the applicable provisions in Minnesota Rules, chapter 1300, and as amended in this chapter.”

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. Minnesota Department of Labor and Industry, Construction Codes and Licensing Division works in loads for that reason, and so does every figure set out below.

The Minnesota document itself is the place to look a town up, and what it prints is applied by Minnesota Department of Labor and Industry, Construction Codes and Licensing Division. The document behind it is 1303.1700 GROUND SNOW LOAD, published by Minnesota Administrative Rules, Office of the Revisor of Statutes (Minnesota State Building Code), read on September 23, 2026. It establishes the point this way: “The ground snow load, Pg, to be used in determining the design snow loads for buildings and other structures shall be 60 pounds per square foot in the following counties: Aitkin, Becker, Beltrami, Carlton, Cass, Clearwater, Cook, Crow Wing, Hubbard, Itasca, Kanabec, Kittson, Koochiching, Lake, Lake of the Woods, Mahnomen, Marshall, Mille Lacs, Morrison, Norman, Otter Tail, Pennington, Pine, Polk, Red Lake, Roseau, St. Louis, Todd, and Wadena.”

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.