Vermont Ground Snow Load by County and Town

Vermont draws its own ground snow load map, Annex V Minimum Ground Snow Loads for Vermont by Town or City, through Vermont Department of Public Safety, Division of Fire Safety. 14 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. 14 Vermont figures, running from 40 lbs. at Williston to 70 lbs. at Killington, every one of them quoted from the document it was printed in. Nationally 235 figures were read across 33 states.

Authority Having Jurisdiction, Vermont Division of Fire Safety: the state map gives the number, and the AHJ is who approves anything above 2,500 feet. In its own words: “This Code shall be administered and enforced by the Commissioner of Public Safety and staff members of the Division of Fire Safety that are hereby designated to enforce this Code and utilize discretionary authority regarding the details of the application of this Code. Hereafter the Commissioner, or designated representative, or in the case of a cooperative municipal inspection agreement, the approved inspector(s), are designated as the Authority Having Jurisdiction (AHJ).”

Part of Vermont 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: “Ground snow loads above 2500 feet above sea level shall be approved by the AHJ and shall be based on an extreme value statistical analysis of data available in the vicinity of the site using a value with a 2-percent annual probability of being exceeded (50-year mean recurrence interval), or other means acceptable to the AHJ.”

Vermont splits into zones or bands rather than counties, so the boundary that matters is drawn on the document itself. The published Vermont figures run from 40 lbs. to 70 lbs..

Vermont Department of Public Safety, Division of Fire Safety adopts International Building Code, as amended by the 2025 Vermont Fire & Building Safety Code (IBC 2021). Vermont amended it rather than adopting it whole, and 22 states have done the same. The adopting rule reads: “The following nationally recognized safety standards, as amended herein, are adopted to make rules regarding the safeguarding of people and property in case of fire, explosion, hazardous materials, dangerous structural conditions, and the generation of carbon monoxide. LIFE SAFETY CODE – NFPA 101 – 2021 FIRE CODE – NFPA 1 – 2021 INTERNATIONAL BUILDING CODE – IBC – 2021”

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. Authority Having Jurisdiction, Vermont Division of Fire Safety works in loads for that reason, and so does every figure set out below.

The Vermont document itself is the place to look a town up, and what it prints is applied by Authority Having Jurisdiction, Vermont Division of Fire Safety. The document behind it is Annex V Minimum Ground Snow Loads for Vermont by Town or City, published by Vermont Department of Public Safety, Division of Fire Safety, read on September 23, 2026. It establishes the point this way: “-delete & replace- IBC Section 1608.2 Ground Snow Loads: The map "Ground Snow Loads for Vermont by Town or City" from Annex VII of these rules shall be used in determining the minimum ground snow load.”

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.