Received the following information from retired NWS climatologist and long-term friend Robert Leffler on Friday, February 26 on email:
" According to my research, the National Weather Service supervised and published COOP station at Davis, West Virginia has just set a new all-time monthly snowfall record for WV. This morning's 7 a.m. February 26, 2010 24-hour snowfall report of 12.9 new inches (a paralyzing blizzard according to eyewitness reports) gives the site a February total of 105.4 inches!
Since National Weather Service forecasts for this area call for additional large accumulations the remaining three days of the month (26th through the 28th), the new record that appears to have been established today will likely be again smashed.
The Davis 3SE NWS COOP observer station is located at an elevation of 3,715 feet in the north-central Allegheny Mountains of Tucker Co. on the summit of Canaan Mountain. The site lies on the western lip of Canaan Valley, the highest large valley (3,200 ft.) in eastern North America. The highest elevations in the area reach 4,770 feet (Mt. Porte Crayon on the Eastern Continental Divide).
I found two previous monthly WV published snowfall totals of greater than 100 inches at published NWS COOPs; 104.0 inches at Terra Alta, several miles northwest of Davis, WV in January, 1977 and 100.4 inches at Kumbrabrow, WV near Elkins, in March, 1960.
Season-to-date snowfall at Davis 3SE as of 7 a.m. Feb 26, 2010 is 233.5 inches. This does not match the previous seasonal WV record of 301.4 inches, set at the Kumbrabow NWS COOP site during the 1959-60 winter. However, there are still about 8 weeks to go in the typical snow measurement season at the higher elevations.
I would hope that the State Climate Extremes Committee will be activated to address my findings."