About those 'official' airport snow totals: They didn't come from PHL
Weather service: Observations MIA during storm.
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?
For at least the third time in a winter in which there hasn't been all that much to measure, the National Weather Service has revised an official snow total -- from 8.3 inches, to 6.0-- reported by the observers at Philadelphia International Airport.
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.