13 Feet of Snow, This Time in Capracotta, Italy

These photos have been shared in the media this week, claiming to show a "new 24-hour snowfall record" but the text accompanying the photos (translated) says:

"In Capracotta, small mountain Centre at 1400 metres, in the province of Isernia, Saturday March 5 would have fallen in 16 hours 256 cm of snow"

Two hundred fifty-six centimeters equals 100.8 inches. Yes, that's a lot for one day, but it's below the 102 inches that a ski resort in the Pyrenees reported in the same time period on Feb. 4, 2015. I personally feel there is *less* evidence for the Capracotta claim than the Pyrenees claim, it just so happens that the media (and social media) have latched on to this latest claim.

The one-week snowfall map from Snow-Forecast.com shows over 60 inches of snow from the last week, but larger areas of amounts over 100 inches are indicated to the east in the mountains of Bosnia, Montenegro, and Albania. There are also no ski resorts reporting more than 40 inches of snow this week.

The truth is: Ski resorts and mountaintops across Europe routinely get 100 inches or more snow, so how do you know which one to pick? CNN says the World Meteorological Organization "will confirm," but who asked them to, and why not also investigate the Pyrenees event, and dozens of others?

The original article reads in part (translated): "But surely between Abruzzo and Molise it snowed more, as after all, had already happened in the past. The great meteorologist Edmondo Bernacca, in fact, in the Italian Meteorological Magazine of December 1961 wrote that in Roccacaramanico fell 365 cm (143.7") of snow in 24 hours."

It's likely, in the end, that the WMO will not approve any of these potential records due to their stringent rules about snow measurement and documentation. But that doesn't mean it didn't happen -- or that it didn't happen far in the past.