How Do I Know When the Ice Dam Season Is Over?

You want to know when you no longer have to worry about ice dams forming on your roof – right?

Well, I can tell you in one sentence when the worrisome ice dam season is over:

If it’s mid-February or later and the nighttime low temperatures are consistently above freezing for more than a week straight and it’s not snowing, you can be pretty sure ice dam season is over.

Got all that?  (Hope so: I tried my best to stuff it into a single breath!)

A couple of notes and points worth highlighting:

Ice dam season probably is NOT over if only the daytime highs are above freezing.  Even if snow and ice melts in the daytime, you could still have an ice dam if it can refreeze at night (in-fact, this is how most late-season ice dams form).  You’re only out of the woods when the nighttime lows are above freezing for many days in a row.

It has to be mid-February later.  If the nighttime lows are above freezing but it’s only December, that probably means the ice dam season hasn’t even begun.

Every year, I write that sentence on my calendar – because it tells me when I can start scheduling a little break after a long, tough winter of removing ice dams!