Thursday's Internet Edition, March 11, 2010.

But the total accumulation remains less than what hit the area in the winter of 1977-78, though not by much.

“We’ve still got a ways to go to get into the record books,” meteorologist Jamie Matusiak of the National Weather Service office in Charleston said.

However, there’s still time to catch up.

According to figures for Spencer maintained by the NWS in Charleston, this winter started off slowly with ˝-inch of snow last November. From then, things got a lot worse, with 17.9 inches of snow in December and another 18.3 inches in January.

February may have been the shortest month, but you couldn’t tell it by the snowfall, with 28.1 inches recorded that month for a total of 64.8 inches for the winter.

That’s so far.

The figure for this winter remains a couple inches below the 66.9 inches that fell on Spencer in the winter of 1977-78. The highest figure since then was 1995-96, with 51.8 inches of snow.

“For Roane County, depending on the elevation, the normal is between 25 and 35 inches,” Matusiak said.

This February had the most snow for the month on record in Charleston, although figures for Spencer are incomplete.

“We have some holes in the data,” Matusiak said. For instance, she said some monthly figures from Spencer are missing for the winter of 1976-77, which also saw a lot of snow.

The February snowfall of 25.6 inches in Charleston this year easily broke the old mark of 21.8 inches that stood since 1964.

Charleston has had 61 inches of snow through the end of February, below the 76.6 inches in 1977-78 and well below the 106 inches measured in 1995-96.

As for the possibility of Spencer topping the mark from 1977-78, even if March goes out like a lion, there’s always April to consider.

In 1987, Spencer had a snowfall of 13-1/2 inches on April 2-3, which would be more than enough to put us over the old mark, and probably put many local residents already weary of winter weather over the edge.