Part of the front eave on Tracey Muir’s house collapsed under the weight of heavy snow on Jan. 8, 2026. (Photo by Jamie Diep/KTOO)
A portion of a residential roof collapsed Thursday in Juneau under the weight of several feet of snow that fell over the past few weeks.
Tracey Muir was born and raised in Juneau and bought the house in Mendenhall Valley a little over a year ago. He was inside when the roof gave way.
“This morning, I heard crackling, came and took a peek, and it was down and, well, all the snow we’ve been getting is what took it,” he said.
An overhanging section of the roof collapsed on the front of the house, which was built in the 1970s.
The National Weather Service estimated the weight of snow on a flat roof could be around 41.6 pounds per square foot as of Wednesday, based on ground measurements made at their forecast office in Mendenhall Valley.
Emergency officials and engineers say most homes built in Juneau before 1991 were designed with a snow load capacity of 40 pounds per square foot.
Muir said that, thankfully, there’s been no damage to the inside of the house, and that he was already planning to have the roof replaced this spring. He plans to patch it until then.
“I’m definitely done with winter,” he said.
Muir hadn’t cleared snow from the roof, and said he was hoping warmer weather would melt it for him. Now, he suggests others don’t follow in his footsteps.
“Get your roofs cleaned,” he said.
Nate Geary is a civil engineer who specializes in structural design. During the record-breaking storm that dumped four feet of snow on Juneau just after Christmas, he measured the weight that accumulated on his roof using roughly the same method as NWS.
“Once I got close to 40 pounds a square foot, which is the snow load rating for my roof, I decided it was close enough to switch over from a science experiment to going ahead and cleaning it off,” Geary said.
That was on Dec. 30. His home in Mendenhall Valley was built in 1973.
He said a roof will show some warning signs before it gives out.
“It’ll start to deform, which can create some cracks in the sheetrock or make some popping sounds,” he said.
Geary said there are some steps homeowners can take to reduce the risk of roof collapse, even if they can’t clear the whole thing.
“I think the first layer of risk management would be like using a snow rake and clearing eaves and overhangs, since they’re the weakest part of the structure,” he said.
Then, he suggests clearing around vents to prevent moisture accumulation in the attic, and shoveling drainage paths on flat roofs.
Geary is from Juneau and said that when heavy snow has fallen on his roof in the past, it melted relatively quickly. That’s not the case this time.
“This snowstorm is just not like anything that I’ve seen since I’ve lived here,” he said.
More heavy snow and rain are on the way. Meteorologists said that could make the snowpack heavier, wetter and harder to move.
KTOO’s Jamie Diep contributed to this story.
