Stone County, MS Roof Snow Load - 5 psf
Stone County, MS roof snow load, translated
A typical heated home in Stone County is designed to carry 5 pounds per square foot of snow on its roof, per ASCE 7-22. The physics-based figure alone would be 3.5 psf, but ASCE 7's own low-slope minimum (§7.3.4) sets a floor of 5 psf for flat and low-pitch roofs here, which is the number that actually governs.
On a roof that means 11 in. of fresh snow, 4 in. once it packs down, or 1 in. of solid ice - three very different piles for the same load. This is a modest add-on to standard roof loading - ordinary residential construction carries it without extra bracing.
Stone County in numbers
- Design roof snow load5 psf
- Ground snow load, ASCE 7 map5 psf
- National rank#2,302 of 2,758
- Mississippi rank#55 of 82
- Population19,569
- Annual snowfall, NOAA normal0.1 in.
- FIPS28131
Where Stone County ranks
#55 of 82 Mississippi counties by design load, top 83% of 2,758 nationally - that's Stone County's spot. That's 1.5 psf below Mississippi's own county-average design load of 6.5 psf.
FIPS 28131, population 19,569, centered near 30.7902°N 89.1123°W. ASCE 7's underlying ground snow load here is 5 psf before the code's exposure and importance factors bring it to the 5 psf design figure above.
Stone County: average annual snowfall
Stone County sees about 0.1 in. of snow most winters, per the SAUCIER EXP FOREST, MS US station's 1991-2020 NOAA normal. See the density guide.
Read this before you use Stone County's figure
The figure above assumes the case ASCE 7-22 treats as typical: a heated, ordinary-occupancy home on a partially exposed site. Change any of those - exposure, heating, roof pitch, occupancy category - and the real design number moves.
A building permit needs the number at your exact address, not the county average - the free ASCE 7 Hazard Tool returns that from your coordinates in about a minute and produces a PDF a plan reviewer will accept. (How this figure is calculated.)