About those 'official' airport snow totals: They didn't come from PHL

For a variety of reasons, from the physics to the vertical profile of the atmosphere to the vicissitudes of nature, meteorologists will tell you that predicting snow totals remains a challenge.

But what's so complicated about measuring the stuff?

The previous two times, the totals were changed after evaluations of the amounts that were reported by the observers newly hired before the winter.

With this one, evidently, the error was fundamental: The  observers failed to call in the totals, said Joe Miketta the acting chief of the National Weather Service's Mount Holly office.