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This is what it looks like in the Italian town that just got 8 feet of snow

Capracotta, Italy, after what may have been 100 inches of snow in just 18 hours.
Capracotta, Italy, after what may have been 100 inches of snow in just 18 hours.
Capracotta, Italy, after what may have been 100 inches of snow in just 18 hours.
Telemolise

The town of Capracotta in central Italy has been hit by what an initial report says is 100.8 inches, or over eight feet, of snow in just an 18-hour period. The Washington Post’s Angela Fritz, while noting that the report is preliminary, says it could well be a new world record for snowfall in one day’s time.

Given that it’s both a charming Italian village and also now a quasi-apocalyptic winter wonderland, Capracotta provides some visuals that are naturally quite stunning. Here’s a video from the town that the Post found from Italian broadcaster Telemolise. If you watch it, as a bonus to the stunning footage you also get to listen to people speak Italian:

Here is an adorable screen capture from the video:

(Telemolise)

The snow got so high that residents could practically climb up to the second-floor windows:

An obvious question you might be wondering — is this case of extreme weather a result of global climate change? — doesn’t have a simple answer. Here’s Brad Plumer:

Storms and heat waves and droughts happen all the time. Global warming is expected to make certain weather events — like heat waves — more frequent. But it can be difficult to tie an individual weather event to warming.

One oft-used analogy is to baseball players and steroids. Baseball players can hit home runs without steroids. But they can hit more home runs, on average, after taking steroids. So it's safe to say that steroid use will lead to more home runs. But it's harder to prove that a specific home run was caused by steroids.

That all said, climate scientists are starting to link a variety of extreme weather events to global warming.

Read more on climate change and its implications here.

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