I’m confused or stupid, or both.
How can it go from being the snowiest in 120 years to being the second then the fourth largest?
Because it is culturally insensitive and borderline microaggressive to assign reporter Marwa Eltagouri to write an article about snow. He/she never grew up seeing snow — how would you expect him/her to write a clear article about it? You are clearly a relic of the white patriarchical heteronormative ruling class. White Winters Don’t Matter!
That took me a moment as well, but it makes sense.
This snowfall (single-day) was the largest in 120 yrs... none bigger since 1895
The snowfall that was larger was 120 years ago, but no other recorded snowfall before that was larger than this one, so it is still #2 all-time...
And the fourth-largest is referring to total NOV snow accumulation, not a single-day NOV snowfall... some Novembers didn't have such a large single-day dump of snow, but likely had several days of snow with higher totals... but this one was so big that it alone put this NOV in the top four, with over a week to go to get even higher totals and maybe move up the rankings even more.
They are talking about two different records.
This snowfall is the biggest single storm since 1895. (that covers the first two references, biggest since 1895, therefore 1895 is larger).
The third reference is for a whole month of November; this single storm dumping enough snow to make it into a record for a whole month (at the fourth spot). If Chicago sees more snow in November, which it might, Colorado is expecting more snow next week, it might move even higher on that record.
Professor Gore will be with you in a moment.