Nevada Ground Snow Load by County and City

Nevada sets no ground snow load at state level, so every figure comes from a county or city building department. Nine figures from Nevada 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 Nevada figure comes back with several different answers from several different pages, all of them correct for the place they were written for. nine Nevada figures, running from 20 psf at Churchill County to 600 at Lake Tahoe Basin, Risk Category II, every one of them quoted from the document it was printed in. Nationally 235 figures were read across 33 states.

The city or county building department: Nevada law leaves adoption to each city and county. In its own words: “the governing body of any city or county may adopt a building code, specifying the design, soundness and materials of structures”

Part of Nevada 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: “Intermediate values may be determined by interpolation”

The figure moves with elevation in Nevada, 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 Nevada figures run from 20 psf to 600.

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 city or county building department works in loads for that reason, and so does every figure set out below.

A Nevada figure for an address the documents below do not cover comes from the city or county building department. The document behind it is International Building Code Table 1608.2.1 Ground Snow Loads for Northern Nevada Locations within Washoe County, published by Washoe County Building and Safety, read on September 23, 2026. It establishes the point this way: “Subject to the limitation set forth in NRS 244.368 and 278.586, the governing body of any city or county may adopt a building code, specifying the design, soundness and materials of structures, and may adopt rules, ordinances and regulations for the enforcement of the building code.”

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.