Snow: Unreal numbers

As though shot from fire hoses, heavy snows continue to plaster narrow corridors of the New York lakes region with unreal accumulations.

The National Weather Service forecast calls for additional "multiple feet of snow" in areas to the northeast Lakes Erie and Ontario – as strong winds from the southwest continue to howl over the unfrozen waters.

That includes some of the areas that already have reported 5 feet of snow. For perspective, that would be close to what fell here all of last winter, the second-snowiest on record in Philly.

But the question of whether those snows constitute a record won't be an easy one to answer, says Samantha G. Borisoff, climatologist at the Northeast Regional Climate Center, in Ithaca, N.Y.

Snow measurement is more art than science, however the National Weather Service has rather specific guidelines on how one should measure the stuff.

These days with so much concern about global warming and extreme events, documentation is ever more important.

Ideally, this rite of winter should be conducted using a snow board in an open area with measurements taken every six hours, certainly a fun exercise when snow is falling at the rate of 3 and 4 inches an hour.

Sorting out which of the reported measurements are valid is going to require some climatological detective work before the government can go about declaring records.

The nearest official station to the cosmic snow region is Buffalo International Airport, where a decent-size snowfall, 10.7 inches was reported during the 24-hour period ending around noon.

However, just 20 miles to the south, in East Aurora, closer to 2 feet had fallen in the same period.

The East Aurora total came from a trained volunteer observer who may well have followed all the proper protocol, however that would not carry the official heft of a measurement from one of the government's first-order stations, like Buffalo's.

That said, Buffalo did a record for a Nov. 19 Wednesday with 7.6 inches of snow measured officially; remember, this is a first-order station.

Outside of Buffalo, however, the record situation becomes more complex.

In his blog post, Jeff Masters, meteorologist at the popular Weather Underground site, notes that the official 24-hour snow record is 49 inches, on Nov. 14-15, 1900. These extreme events tend to happen before the lakes freeze.

He noted that Lancaster and Gardenville had reported 60 inches in 24 hours, however; ultimately , it would be up to an august body known as the State Climate Extremes Committee to verify those measurements.

That's a committee set up in 2006 to evaluate such events. On its website it explains that when a potential record has been observed and submitted to the weather service or the state climatologist, the committee members will meet, review, and then vote.

One footnote, forgive the pun, you might recall that it took four years to verify the record 30.7 inches of snow that fell on Jan. 7-8, 1996, in Philadelphia.

If memory serves, however, we didn't need a committee, or even a ruler, to verify that it was a whole bunch of snow.