Yeah yeah, I know it's a little early for this, but with the troubles in Buffalo the other weekend it came up in conversation and I've been thinking about the effects of heavy snowfalls on communities, historically. We've all seen those paintings of country cottages with a thick puffy load of snow on the roof and a curl of smoke rising from the chimney, but what happens when it gets really heavy?
I know that in some areas the snow load on a roof can cause it to collapse. Most places where this was/is a big concern had/have more steeply pitched roofs to prevent such accumulation. In the US, we have plenty of folks who climb up othe roof to shovel snow in the event of an unusually heavy fall (sometimes resulting in injury or death as the shoveler takes a ride down with the snow). One winter while I was in Prague, we had a warm spell after some lengthy accumulation and the places that hadn't been shoveled became real hazards (being 5 or 6 stories tall), doing a fair amount of damage to both people and property when it dumped into the street below. I don't imagine that these are new concerns.
Heat, whether from within the home, or without, is the primary factor. Most homes would be heated by a fire. Different materials were burned for this purpose (wood, coal, charcoal, peat, animal wastes), depending on what was locally available and cheap. However, fireplaces do create drafts, and tend to only heat the area immediately surrounding the flames. This is why people had those little footwarmers for church, special bed-warmers (no, I don't mean their lovers), and so on. Still today in the Czech Republic, especially in the little cottages, you find that the wood-fired stoves are in the middle of the kitchen/dining room and lined with ceramic tiles, the better to radiate heat into the house instead of losing it up the chimney. You'll find similar, though on a larger scale and just intended for heat, in large public buildings. These large heaters used brightly colored and highly decorated tiles to distribute the heat about the room. Unfortunately, most of the heat would still be lost out the windows, even if they did use double sets of glass.
A contributing factor to the presence of snow on a roof is insulation. These days you can tell the poorly insulated homes when it snows, by the barren spots on their roofs. While they certainly didn't use as much insulation back in the day, there also wasn't central heating (well, not the timeperiods I employ). Naturally, the areas around the chimney stack would be melted clear by the warmed stone/brick, but what about the rest of it? Part of the issue may be whether the top level in a specific home was living space, or just used for storage. A storage space, thoroughly jammed with odds and ends might just protect the floors below. I'm thinking any building with a hay loft would stay toastier for this same reason. If the heat goes straightthrough the roof, it'd be bad for keeping warm, but might decrease the snow load in wintertime.
For all of the research I do here on the Internet, I'm just not sure how to go about finding this information. Maybe I just need to do more reading on Russia, or Scandinavian countries, to find out about their realities. Was it a simple case of building for the climate? I suppose that back in the day, you spent more time in the house, come winter, so you could hear the roof creaking before it collapsed on you... Maybe one of my faithful readers has some suggestions or a direction to point me in. Maybe folks just got out and shoveled the damn roof. resultant injuries were just a part of life. Usually I can sus out the right questions to ask, but I'm a little baffled on this one. The answers aren't satisfying me quite yet. Thank goodness most of my stories have taken place in the summer so far.
Heating Prague Castle - https://www.flickr.com/photos/17999863@N00/4704439970/
Comfort heating - http://www.achrnews.com/articles/87035-an-early-history-of-comfort-heating
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