Anchorage saw a record amount of snow in January, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you need to shovel your roof just yet.
The snow loads on roofs in the Anchorage area are about halfway to capacity, according to Greg Soule, who is in charge of building code for the municipality.
It’s all about the weight of the snow, he said. The municipality just took a measurement Wednesday.
“We basically just have a device that is one square foot in area,” he said. “We then shove that into the snow that's on the roof, and then you slip something underneath it, pull it up, and then dump that into a sack, and then weigh that.”
Since the ‘60s, municipal code has required roofs in the Anchorage Bowl to withstand 40 pounds of snow per square foot of roof, known as PSF. Soule said right now, we’re at about 20 PSF.
In the past few years, Anchorage has recorded 24 commercial roof collapses, almost all with the same style of wooden trusses. There have been no reported residential roof failures, he said. Homes are generally at much lower risk because of how they’re built.
“Residential construction, there's interior walls, you know, that are also load bearing, so that reduces the spans,” he said. “There's steeper pitch generally, so they shed snow.”
City officials will put out warnings if the snow load gets close to the max, Soule said, and concerned residents can also keep an eye on total snowfall in the area.
By Wednesday, Anchorage had gotten about 57 inches of snow. If that total grows to 90 to 100 inches of snow, he said, it might be a good time to clear your roof.
There can also be warning signs inside your home.
“There are other things that you can look for,” he said. “Like windows and doors that might be sticking or jamming, not opening correctly the way they usually do, cracks in the drywall, that sort of thing.”
