Also, something I read—the weather station at Reagan National traditionally badly under-reports snow accumulation compared to the surrounding areas. Whatever fancy snow-measuring device they use is actually on the roof of the airport, which tends to cause accumulations to show as lower than if it was on the ground. On the December 19th storm, it under-reported by something like 30% and that pattern seems to have held true for this storm as well. Everywhere around the airport was in the 22-26” range, but DCA recorded 18”.
The irony is, the all-time record snow for Washington was the “Knickerbocker storm” (so named because it collapsed the roof of the Knickerbocker Theatre), which was 27-28”. That was measured somewhere in northwest DC since there was no National Airport in the 1920s. Between DCA’s less favorable location, and the known underreporting problems, the record of the Knickerbocker storm may never be broken, since DCA is the “station of record” for all of Washington DC.
}:-)4
Knickerbocker Theatre was located near the junction of 18th Street and Columbia Road in the heart of the Adams-Morgan district in NW DC (roughly 6-7 blocks NE of the Washington Hilton hotel on Connecticut Avenue).