More infrequent storms bring snow weights of 26 pounds-per-square-foot in 100-year events, and 31 pounds-per-square-foot for 200-year values. For example, some of the hardest hit areas were northern and central New Jersey.įor northern New Jersey, building-code minimums generally require roofs to withstand snow weights of 21 pounds per square foot - the equivalent of a storm that occurs once every 50 years. ![]() Once the snow weights were determined based on water content within the snow, they corroborated the climatological information with minimum building codes for given areas. The study was funded by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.ĭeGaetano and the other scientists examined the weight of snow during the period Jan. Wilks, Cornell associate professor of meteorology, to author a peer-reviewed paper, "Evaluation of East Coast Snow Loads Following the January 1996 Storms," in the Journal of Performance of Constructed Facilities (May 1997), a publication of the American Society of Civil Engineers, New York City. Schmidlin, associate professor of geography, Kent State University and Daniel S. "It was the accumulation of snow from the two storms that posed the snow weight problem."Įnough snow fell throughout the 1995-96 season, that Boston, New York City, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and the greater Washington area smashed their snowfall records.īut, during the Blizzard of '96, news reports of roof failures throughout the Northeast corridor - Boston to Washington - prompted DeGaetano Thomas W. "It snowed, stayed cold, and we got more snow," DeGaetano said. 8-10, 1996) was a whopper, but with snow resting on rooftops, another smaller storm followed and contributed to even greater snow weight on roofs. "It showed that most buildings exceeded the minimum building code requirements." DeGaetano, a climatologist with the Northeast Regional Climate Center at Cornell University. "In places where roofs should have collapsed, they didn't collapse," said Arthur T. Well over a year since the heaviest snow of the century fell over the Northeast, climatological studies now show that had it not been for structures built "better-than-code," more roofs could have collapsed under the weight, researchers say. ![]() For building engineers and climatologists, the memory of the Blizzard of '96 refuses to melt away.
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