Ohio Ground Snow Load: The Code and the Local Figures

Ohio adopts the national building code without a ground snow load amendment of its own, so the governing figure for a given address is the one the code's own table carries, and the body that applies it is the certified building department of the county, city, township or village where the work is. three figures published by Ohio bodies themselves are set out below. 17 states are in the same position, which makes it the second commonest arrangement in the country. three Ohio figures, running from 20 Pounds per square foot at Olmsted Township to 30 psf at Geauga County, every one of them quoted from the document it was printed in. Nationally 235 figures were read across 33 states.

The certified building department of the county, city, township or village where the work is: the state prints the map but leaves the ground snow load column of the design criteria table blank for each jurisdiction to fill in, and the commercial code lets a jurisdiction adopt a higher figure. In its own words: “Where these values are deemed inadequate because of record snowfall or experience, higher ground snow loads are to be determined and adopted by the local jurisdiction.”

Part of Ohio 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: “a. 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 is keyed to the county in Ohio, as it is in 21 states, so the county line rather than the town line is what changes the answer. The published Ohio figures run from 20 Pounds per square foot to 30 psf.

Ohio Board of Building Standards adopts Residential Code of Ohio (one-, two- and three-family dwellings), Ohio Administrative Code Chapter 4101:8-3; Ohio Building Code, Ohio Administrative Code rule 4101:1-16-01, for all other buildings (Residential Code of Ohio effective July 1, 2019; Ohio Building Code structural rule effective March 1, 2024, adopting the International Building Code, 2021 edition). Ohio amended it rather than adopting it whole, and 22 states have done the same. The adopting rule reads: “Chapter 16 of the International Building Code, 2021 edition, as incorporated by reference and modified in Section 101.1.1 of this code, is further modified as follows:”

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 certified building department of the county, city, township or village where the work is works in loads for that reason, and so does every figure set out below.

The code's figure is applied to a given address by the certified building department of the county, city, township or village where the work is. The document behind it is Rule 4101:8-3-01 | Building planning, Table 301.2(1) Climatic and Geographic Design Criteria and Figure 301.2(6) Ground Snow Loads, Pg, (lb/ft2) for the Eastern United States, published by Ohio Board of Building Standards, read on September 23, 2026. It establishes the point this way: “o. The jurisdiction shall fill in this section of the table using the Ground Snow Loads in Figure 301.2(6).”

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.