Nebraska

Statewide summary — confirm with your building department before designing

No value on this row was changed by this audit, but these are statewide summaries and IRC Table R301.2 is filled in by your local building department, not by the state. The seismic design category A was checked against the USGS ASCE 7-16 design maps at Site Class D and Risk Category II and holds for Omaha, Lincoln, Grand Island and Scottsbluff, whose short-period design accelerations all land in the A band under the residential code's determination. One caveat matters for larger projects: under the full two-parameter ASCE 7 determination used for commercial work, the one-second parameter pushes Omaha, Lincoln and Scottsbluff into B at Site Class D, so a commercial building in eastern Nebraska should not rely on the A shown here. The 105 mph wind speed is an ultimate design wind speed at Risk Category II; Nebraska sits between mapped contours and a site read can land a few miles per hour either side of it. Frost depth, ground snow load, termite risk and winter design temperature were not confirmed against an adopted Nebraska table and should be obtained from the authority having jurisdiction. Snow load audit, August 2026. Nebraska publishes no ground snow load, and the adopted instrument shows why. The state building code is created by statute, not by rule: Neb. Rev. Stat. 71-6403(1)(b) adopts the 2018 International Residential Code by reference with only two carve-outs, section R313 and chapters 25 through 33, and 71-6403(2) provides that the codes so adopted "shall constitute the state building code except as amended pursuant to the Building Construction Act or as otherwise authorized by state law." No section of the Act amends IRC Table R301.2 or supplies a snow load, a wind speed, a seismic category or a frost depth; those cells are filled in by the local building official. Both range columns are therefore left null rather than invented. Applicability is unusually broad for a plains state and is worth recording. Under 71-6404(2) the state building code applies to all buildings owned by the state or a state agency, in each county, city or village that elects to adopt it, and in each county, city or village that has not adopted a local code within two years after an update to the state code. 71-6406(1)(b) repeats that default and adds the one significant exemption: the state code "shall not apply to construction on a farm or for farm purposes." 71-6405 makes compliance mandatory for every state agency, the University of Nebraska and the state colleges regardless of whether anyone locally administers the code. So the 2018 IRC really is the operative residential code across most of Nebraska; it simply does not carry Nebraska-specific climatic numbers. None of the four existing values was changed. Seismic design category A was re-confirmed against the USGS ASCE 7-16 design maps service at Site Class D and Risk Category II, returning short-period design accelerations of about 0.076 g at Omaha and 0.135 g at Scottsbluff, both category A on the single short-period parameter the IRC uses; the full two-parameter determination puts both in B, which is the caveat already recorded above for commercial work.