South Dakota Ground Snow Load by County and City

South Dakota sets no ground snow load at state level, so every figure comes from a county or city building department. One figures from South Dakota 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 South Dakota figure comes back with several different answers from several different pages, all of them correct for the place they were written for. one figure for South Dakota, reading 40 psf, quoted from the document it was printed in.

The county or city building department: the code a South Dakota project is built to is the one that county or city adopted, and its own handbook is where the snow figure is printed. In its own words: “You are responsible for ensuring that your project complies with the specific requirements of all relevant codes and regulations as adopted by Minnehaha County.”

The figure is keyed to the county in South Dakota, as it is in 21 states, so the county line rather than the town line is what changes the answer.

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

A South Dakota figure for an address the documents below do not cover comes from the county or city building department. The document behind it is Residential Building Handbook 2021, published by Minnehaha County Planning & Zoning, read on September 23, 2026. It establishes the point this way: “You are responsible for ensuring that your project complies with the specific requirements of all relevant codes and regulations as adopted by Minnehaha County. • 2021 International Building Code (IBC) as adopted by Minnehaha County • 2021 International Residential Building Code (IRC) as adopted by Minnehaha County • 2021 International Existing Building Code (IEBC) as adopted by Minnehaha County”

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.