DC snow totals fail to add up

Associated Press

WASHINGTON, D.C.

It’s not that 17.8 inches of snow wasn’t enough.

But according to The Washington Post, the number that will go down in the history books as Washington’s official total – recorded at Reagan National Airport – is paltry compared with some other spots in the region, raising the question: Why the disparity?

The reason, it turns out, may be partly due to the improvised technique used by a small team of weather observers at the airport who lost their snow-measuring device to the elements midway through the blizzard. It was buried by the very snow it was supposed to measure.

The mix-up may have kept the blizzard of 2016 from breaking into the region’s top three snowstorms on record, based on accumulations.