Italian Village Receives Over 8 FEET Of Snow Within 24 Hours, Possible New World Record!

Written by Mark Vogan on March 11, 2015 in Rest of Europe, Spring 2015, Winter 2014/15 with 0 Comments

Article from www.weathertoski.co.uk

Blog: Italian village breaks world snowfall record!

Wednesday 11 March 2015

The sleepy Italian village of Capracotta, 3 hours south-east of Rome in the Italian Apennines, claims to have broken the world 24 hour snowfall record with a staggering 256cm of snow (8.34 feet) on Thursday 5 March 2015.

Capracotta, Italy – Photo: meteoweb.eu

Snowfall records are notoriously difficult to verify but, to put this into some sort of context, the previous official record (at least recognised by the World Meteorological Organisation) was 192cm set in 1921 in Silver Lake, Colorado. In the Alps, Bessans (Savoie) holds the highest official total that we know of, with 173cm in April 1969. However, it should be noted that there are numerous unsubstantiated claims of higher, both in the Alps and elsewhere.

Capracotta, Italy – Photo: meteoweb.eu

Whatever the final verdict on Capracotta, it seems likely that the 24 hour snowfall world record is now theirs, with Pescocostanzo (just down the road) running a close second with 240cm.

The cause of this monster snowfall was an unusually deep area of low pressure centred over southern Italy (see image below). The position of the storm was perfect for delivering moisture-laden easterly winds straight in off the Adriatic, towards the central Apennines where the air was forced to rise and abruptly purged of its moisture.

Pressure chart for 5 March 2015 showing intense storm approaching southern Italy – Image: meteociel.fr

The contrast between the cold polar air wrapped up in the depression’s core and the relatively warm seas it passed over gave this storm a particular potency, but ultimately it was the perfectly aligned winds off the sea, combined with the local topography, which took the numbers to record-breaking levels.

Article from Huffington Post

Italian Village Gets 8 Feet Of Snow In 24 Hours, May Break Global Record

Snow news is good news, unless you live in Capracotta. The Italian village may have just set a record for the most snow ever to fall in 24 hours.

A storm on March 5 dumped just over 100.8 inches (or 8 feet, 4 inches) of snow there in 18 hours, reports the Italian weather website Meteoweb. The snowfall inundated the city and left some in the region without power and water.

www.meteoweb.eu

“It was a spectacle that took our breath away. In some parts of the village the snow was like a long white wall,” village mayor Antonio Monaco told the Italian news agency ANSA, as translated to English by the Telegraph.

“It was tough but everybody pulled together and made sure that the old people who couldn’t leave their houses had the food and medicines that they needed.”

www.meteoweb.eu

Capracotta sits at an elevation of 4,662 feet in central Italy, just an hour and a half drive from the country’s eastern coast.

CNN cautions the record isn’t official yet. Assuming the World Meteorological Association verifies the amount of snowfall, however, the storm would break previous records dating back to the 1920s.

www.meteoweb.eu

In 1921, a mid-April storm in Silver Lake, Colorado dropped 75.8 inches of snow in a day, setting a record for the most snow to fall in the U.S. in 24 hours. Over the course of 32 and a half hours, the storm ultimately deposited more than 95 inches of snow.

Check out more photos of the snow in Capracotta below: