snow load on design of foundations
 

snow load on design of foundations
snow drifting can be quite significant at times and we usually include it in our foundation design. you can, however, use approximate loads and areas in your calcs instead of using an extremely precise calculation.
where it is customary to establish an allowable pressure on the soil as in spain, the limit states combinations don't contribute much to the (unstated to such purpose) safe or probabilistical establishement of service level loads from which the actual pressure is to be got for comparison, so i understand your question. so on the one hand i understand some approximation would be here possible, since the code itself is undefined, but as well one has always to consider any situation that is likely to occur, in which case drift could become critical sometime somewhere.