If you live in an area where it snows a lot, you may find yourself raking snow off your roof. In a well-designed house, this is rarely necessary. Not all houses, however, are well-designed for snow.

Some houses have porches with flat roofs that collect snow. The porch is an addition to the house and is an afterthought. Other houses have shallow-pitched roofs that are not steep enough to cause the accumulated snow to slide off naturally.

In the case of the house I live in, the house is positioned just below a hill that stops the wind. The wind stops there, deposits the snow, and it makes accumulates in huge drifts that are out of proportion to the size of the actual storm.