An impressive winter storm may have produced snowfall rates rivaling a long-standing world snowfall record from the 1920s in Italy last week.

According to , 256 centimeters (100.8 inches) of snow was measured in about an 18-hour period in the town of Capracotta, Italy, on Thursday, March 5, 2015. Capracotta (population about 1,000) is located about 90 miles east of central Rome in the Apennine Mountains, at an elevation of 4,662 feet (1,421 meters) above sea level.

The village of Pescocostanzo also picked up 240 centimeters (94.5 inches), or almost 8 feet of snow, last Thursday, according to.

"That would be maintaining a rate of around 5 inches of snow per hour for 18 hours," says senior meteorologist, .

Put another way: Imagine that Boston's January-February 2015 snowfall (99.1 inches) fell in less than 24 hours.

Infrared satellite image of snowstorm affecting Italy's Apennine Mountains on March 5, 2015.

The slow-moving storm responsible for this massive dump of snow in the Italian high country also generated a massive windstorm that downed trees in Tuscany, as well as other parts of Italy, Bosnia and Croatia.

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Is This A World Record?

The short answer is: "Maybe."

The official U.S. record 24-hour snowfall, 75.8 inches, was measured in Silver Lake, Colorado, from April 14-15, 1927, according to Weather Underground weather historian . However, may have topped that.

Globally, the 24-hour snow record belongs to .

is tasked with investigating global extreme weather events to ensure proper instrumentation and measurement techniques were followed before certifying a new world record.

However, the WMO does not archive or verify world snowfall extremes. "Snowfall sampling is markedly complex and not consistently standardized or monitored around the world," said Dr. Randall Cerveny, chief curator of the WMO's World Climate Extremes list, in a forwarded email.

The U.S.,Canadaand Japan are the only countries that maintain historical snowfall and snow depth records, according to Burt. Only the liquid equivalent precipitation (how much water from melted snow) is tracked in Europe, he says.

Measuring snowfall isn't a matter of sticking a ruler into the ground. The standard procedure for snow measurement in the United States involves the, wiped clean after each regular snowfall measurement.

Winter weather expertwas a part of a team looking into a claim of 77 inches of snow in 24 hours from a lake-effect snowstorm in Montague, New York, in 1997. "Instead of the standard four measurements in 24 hours, the observer made five (measurements). Therefore, this snowfall total was disqualified from the record books."

High winds can whip snow into large drifts. Winds gusted over 100 mph in the Capracotta, Italy event. This is another reason a snowboard must be used for accurate snowfall measurements. You don't want to measure the height of a drift, or for that matter, any pre-existing snow prior to the event in a snowfall measurement.

Despite that, Italy's Apennines are notorious for these mammoth snow events. Montevergine, in the southern Apennines, once had 54.4 inches of snow in 24 hours on Feb. 22, 1929, according to Burt.

"The official snowfall stats from the Italian Met service for this event are in," said Jeff Masters, Director of Meteorology at Weather Underground.

"According to weather records expert Maximiliano Herrera, who is from Italy, the 24 hour max accumulation was 88cm (34.6") amongst all stations in the area (at the Capracotta regional station of the Civilian Protection)," Masters reported.

"Snowfall amounts were mostly between 70 and 80cm (28 and 31 inches) in 24 hours...snow depths [data] from March 4, 2015 for the region show that there was already around 1 - 1.5 meters of snow on the ground before the event, so presumably a lot of blowing and drifting made for some dramatic-looking snow depths on the ground like in the photo shown here."

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Burt also said the Guinness Book of World Records may look into this event.

Regardless, the storm left some incredible piles of snow in its wake.