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How's this work?

R

rrlund

Well-known Member
This has sparked debate between the anchors and weather people on the local news. There's been a lot of snow on the roofs around here. Yesterday,the temperature shot up to the upper 40s and the snow started melting real fast. A couple more roofs colapsed. The weather folks say that the cold dry snow we had only weighed 3 pounds per cubic foot,and the wet snow weighs 21 pounds per cubic foot. OK,I get that. BUT,it hasn't rained or snowed any additional. As the snow melts and becomes heavier,the cubic foot volumn decreases. So how did the snow loads on those roofs increase as it melted without any additional precipitation?
Or did it increase? Was it just coincidence that those roofs colapsed?
 
Good question rr - my guess is that weight concentrated in certain areas, finding the already sagging roof support structures.

By the way, I have almost all my snow off the roofs, except for a 6 inch ridge of ice along the north eaves, and that's going fast. The wind evaporated it about as fast as it melted. No icicles on the eaves.

Now if the snowbanks melt enough to expose the wallet I burried last time I plowed snow.
 
Naturally falling snow creates it's own support. That's why the kids can tunnel in it. Once it starts to melt it's structure collapses. The weight of all the snow has to be held up by the roof whereas before the sides of the building were holding a lot of it. Make sense?
 
In addition to raw weight, time is a factor in roof colapse.

A roof truss will stress over time, bending, deflecting, stretching. It can hold the weight for a day or a week, but in 2 months, it slowly rips joints and knotty wood areas apart.

As snow melts, it moves the weight concentrating it in different places.

Put together, the same weight will bring down a roof that held it the day or week before.

--->Paul
 
Not to steal your post, but I tried something the other day. We had a lot of sleet and freezing rain with one of our snows and it was very hard to push. Many piles around here are big piles of snow slabs, it looks really strange. Anyway, I think on average (I know this depends on a lot) that about 1" of rain equals 10" snow. I meausured 10" of snow in our front yard with my daughter as an experiment and it melted down to 3" of water. I thought that s--t was heavy.
 
I like this answer.
A layer of ice on the roof will bridge a long span. If it is slush, it becomes a point load.
The bridge takes added weight from more snow on top of the frozen layer/s. the bridge holds until it melts. There is not very much added weight from condensation unles the temp of the roof is kept very cold, and there is near 100% saturation air for it to condense out of. Jim
 
You'll never guess what I found in the neighbor's snowbank this afternoon....

Yup, my wallet. Minimal damage to the contents - but then most of the stuff was plastic, or laminated. Some of the photos were damp, but salvagable. Especially one that was taken way back in 1969, when a certain young lady had me take a photo to announce her engagement.
 
Heard on Radio other day if you have wet photos don"t let them dry in one group otherwise they will stick and ruin.separate them in water then dry.. think that was it.
 
HEY,I saw Eddie Hansen at the benefit dance for the Rescue Squad Saturday night. That was the first time I'd seen him since Blanchard.
 
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