Taylor County, TX Roof Snow Load - 5 psf
Taylor County, TX roof snow load, translated
A typical heated home in Taylor 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. A modest addition to standard roof loading. Ordinary residential construction handles this without extra bracing.
Taylor County in numbers
- Design roof snow load5 psf
- Ground snow load, ASCE 7 map5 psf
- National rank#2,122 of 2,758
- Texas rank#62 of 254
- Population148,813
- Annual snowfall, NOAA normal1.3 in.
- FIPS48441
Where Taylor County ranks
#62 of 254 Texas counties by design load, top 77% of 2,758 nationally - that's Taylor County's spot. That's 0.4 psf below Texas's own county-average design load of 5.4 psf.
FIPS 48441, population 148,813, centered near 32.2971°N 99.8904°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.
Taylor County: average annual snowfall
Taylor County sees about 1.3 in. of snow most winters, per the TUSCOLA 2NW, TX US station's 1991-2020 NOAA normal. See the density guide.
Read this before you use Taylor 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. Details: the calculation guide.