Virginia Ground Snow Load by County and City

Virginia sets no ground snow load at state level, so every figure comes from a county or city building department. Four figures from Virginia 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 Virginia figure comes back with several different answers from several different pages, all of them correct for the place they were written for. four Virginia figures, running from 20 psf at Henrico County to 40 PSF at Shenandoah County, every one of them quoted from the document it was printed in. Nationally 235 figures were read across 33 states.

The building official of the county, city or town where the work is: the state code hands the climatic and geographic design criteria to the locality, and each building department publishes its own figure. In its own words: “3. Section R301.2 of the IRC authorizing localities to determine climatic and geographic design criteria.”

The figure is keyed to the county in Virginia, as it is in 21 states, so the county line rather than the town line is what changes the answer. The published Virginia figures run from 20 psf to 40 PSF.

Virginia Department of Housing and Community Development adopts 2021 Virginia Construction Code (2021). Virginia adopted it as written. The adopting rule reads: “101.2 Incorporation by reference. Chapters 2 - 35 of the 2021 International Building Code, published by the International Code Council, Inc., are adopted and incorporated by reference to be an enforceable part of the USBC.”

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

A Virginia figure for an address the documents below do not cover comes from the building official of the county, city or town where the work is. The document behind it is 2021 Virginia Construction Code, published by Virginia Department of Housing and Community Development, read on September 23, 2026. It establishes the point this way: “103.4 Use of certain provisions of referenced codes. The following provisions of the IBC and of other indicated codes or standards are to be considered valid provisions of this code. ... 3. Section R301.2 of the IRC authorizing localities to determine climatic and geographic design criteria.”

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.