Record breaking snow dump likely in Italy

A massive snowstorm has dumped a whopping 256 cm (100.8 inches) or two and half meter of snow in about 16 hours in the Italian town of Capracotta last week. To get a proper perspective of how this amount of snow will stack up to, you will have to imagine two average sized men standing on top of each other. Capracotta is a town with a population of about 1,000 people and is located about 144 km east of Rome in the Alps with an elevation of 4,662 feet above sea level.

An Italian village of Pescocostanzo recorded almost 240 cm (94.5 inches) of snow last week, this would be at the rate of around 12.7 cm (5 inches) per hour.

What is incredible is that Boston’s cumulative snowfall of January and February this year is about 251 cm (99 inches), the town of Capracotta received more snow than that in a 16 hour period!

This snow dump was caused by a slow moving system that caused strong winds which has downed trees in Tuscany and some parts of Italy, Bosnia and Croatia.

The US record for a 24 hour period of snowfall is 199 cm (78.5 inches) which was observed in Silver Lake, Colorado on 14^th to 15^th April, 1927. The world record of a 24 hour snowfall is held by Mt. Ibuki, Japan where about 230 cm (90 inches) was measured on 14^th February, 1927.

It remains to be seen when the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) confirms this as the new record since it will become all time record of snowfall in 24 hours anywhere in the world.