North Carolina Ground Snow Load by County and Town

North Carolina draws its own ground snow load map, FIGURE 1608.2 GROUND SNOW LOADS, pg, FOR THE STATE OF NORTH CAROLINA (psf), through North Carolina Building Code Council, North Carolina Office of State Fire Marshal. three 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. three North Carolina figures, running from 15 PSF at Iredell County to 20 psf at Transylvania County, every one of them quoted from the document it was printed in. Nationally 235 figures were read across 33 states.

North Carolina Building Code Council, with the local building official approving values in CS areas and above the mapped elevation limits: the state publishes its own map; above the mapped elevation limits and inside the CS areas the value has to be approved. In its own words: “Ground snow loads for sites at elevations above the limits indicated in Figure 1608.2 and for all sites within the CS areas shall be approved.”

Part of North Carolina 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: “In CS areas, site-specific Case Studies are required to establish ground snow loads. Extreme local variations in ground snow loads in these areas preclude mapping at this scale.”

The figure moves with elevation in North Carolina, 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 North Carolina figures run from 15 PSF to 20 psf.

North Carolina Office of State Fire Marshal, North Carolina Building Code Council adopts North Carolina State Building Code: Building Code (2018). North Carolina amended it rather than adopting it whole, and 22 states have done the same. The adopting rule reads: “1608.2 Ground snow loads. The ground snow loads to be used in determining the design snow loads for roofs shall be determined in accordance with ASCE 7 or Figure 1608.2 for the contiguous United States and Table 1608.2 for Alaska North Carolina.”

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. North Carolina Building Code Council, with the local building official approving values in CS areas and above the mapped elevation limits works in loads for that reason, and so does every figure set out below.

The North Carolina document itself is the place to look a town up, and what it prints is applied by North Carolina Building Code Council, with the local building official approving values in CS areas and above the mapped elevation limits. The document behind it is FIGURE 1608.2 GROUND SNOW LOADS, pg, FOR THE STATE OF NORTH CAROLINA (psf), published by North Carolina Building Code Council, North Carolina Office of State Fire Marshal, read on September 23, 2026. It establishes the point this way: “FIGURE 1608.2 (ADD NC FIGURE FROM 2012 NCBC Figure 1608.2) GROUND SNOW LOADS, pg, FOR THE STATE OF NORTH CAROLINA (psf)”

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.