Ice dam risk in Madison, IN
Ice dams in Madison, IN: how often
3.3 dam days a winter
Low risk. On an ordinary house in Madison, conditions for an ice dam come on about 3.3 days in a normal winter, mostly in January and December.
Madison averages 12 inches of snow a year and about 14 days with snow on the ground. Most of it comes and goes within a few days. The conditions that make a dam need all three at once: snow, cold at the eave and heat above it.
What your attic does to that number in Madison
| Attic | Dam days | Risk |
|---|---|---|
| Air-sealed and well insulated | 2.2 | Low |
| Typical, some insulation, not air-sealed | 3.3 | Low |
| Older or poorly insulated, warm attic | 4.6 | Low |
The attic matters less in Madison than in colder towns: there are only 1.1 days a winter between a typical attic and a sealed one.
Preventing ice dams on a Madison roof
- Check the gutters before the first snow and clear them, so meltwater has somewhere to go. If you see icicles thicker than a finger along the eave after a storm, that is the early sign to look at the attic.
Snowy places are not always the worst: why snowfall misleads.
Madison winter, month by month
| Month | Snow (in) | Days on ground | Dam days |
|---|---|---|---|
| January | 4.4 | 5.8 | 1.5 |
| February | 3.6 | 3.2 | 0.7 |
| March | 1.0 | 0.8 | 0.1 |
| April | 0.1 | 0.0 | 0.0 |
| October | 0.2 | 0.1 | 0.0 |
| December | 3.0 | 4.4 | 1.0 |
Madison next to nearby towns
Madison ranks 81 of 88 Indiana cities here for ice-dam days, behind Plymouth at 15.9 days.
- La Grange, KY 25 mi, 2.6 days
- Seymour, IN 29 mi, 5.0 days
- Sellersburg, IN 32 mi, 2.1 days
- Jeffersonville, IN 33 mi, 2.1 days
- Lyndon, KY 36 mi, 2.0 days
Where these numbers come from
NOAA 1991–2020 climate normals from Madison Sewage Plt, 1.5 miles from Madison. A dam day is a day with snow on the roof and freezing at the eave while heat or sun melts the snow above it. This describes a normal winter, not this one.
- Snow-on-the-ground counts come from a second, nearby station, because the closest one does not record them.