The next time the people of Capracotta, Italy, hear the folks in Boston complain about a snow season of more than 100 inches, they’ll be like: “That’s nice. We’ve been known to get that much in one day.”
In 18 hours, actually.
It’s not an official record yet, but it looks like the Italian village got 100.8 inches (256 centimeters) on Thursday, setting the all-time mark for most snow in 24 hours. Pescocostanzo, about 21 miles (34.6 kilometers) away, only got 94.5 inches (240 cm).
That’s more than Boston got in January and February combined, but just short of the 107.9 inches the city totaled so far for the whole season.
One of the photos posted on MeteoWeb, the Italian weather website that reported the immense snowfall, showed a resident standing on top of the accumulation shaking hands with a neighbor. She is in a second-story window.
The town, which has about 1,000 residents and sits at an altitude of 4,662 feet (1,421 meters), is prone to heavy one-day snowfalls, MeteoWeb reported. You might conclude it’s in the Italian Alps given all that snow, but that’s not the case. It’s about a three-hour drive east of Rome, roughly halfway down the Italian Peninsula, not far from the Adriatic Sea. But it is in the mountains and is vulnerable to weather coming from the northeast.
The World Meteorological Organization will confirm whether the snowfall actually surpassed the 24-hour snowfall record — 75.8 inches — from Silver Lake, Colorado, set in 1921.
MeteoWeb reported that the snow fell in 18 hours and that in unpopulated areas at higher altitudes, it is likely accumulations were much more significant.
