New Hampshire residents still feeling the sting of last season's snow tally shortfall might take pride in another title: 2008 will go down in the books as the state's wettest year in history. Maybe.

It's unclear whether the weekend's onslaught of flurries pushed the liquid precipitation level to a record-breaking high because two agencies that track the state's weather (neither of which are based in New Hampshire) have mismatching data.

If you trust results from AccuWeather.com - the self-proclaimed "World's Weather Authority" - Sunday's storm set a new state record, bringing this year's liquid precipitation total to 57.39 inches, just a few drops more than the 57.28 inches set in 2005.

Don't break out the party hats just yet, folks. According to data from the National Weather Service, the reigning 2005 record still stands. As of midnight Sunday, this year's precipitation level measured in at 56.86 inches, said James Brown, a hydrometeorological technician at the National Weather Service in Gray, Maine.

WMUR reported yesterday that New Hampshire had broken the precipitation record with 57.39 inches, and the Monitor published AccuWeather's figure on its weather page - which was 57.26 inches as of press time. At 4 p.m. yesterday, it was up to 57.42 inches, according to AccuWeather.com meteorologist John Feerick.

"Those numbers should not be different," said Feerick, adding that the Pennsylvania-based AccuWeather gets its results from the National Weather Service. "They may not have included the liquid equivalent of (Sunday's) snow in the total for the year. They're supposed to call us back and let us know if that's happened."

Brown didn't speculate reasons for the discrepancy, but he said he was there through midnight calculating data. And according to his data, there was no new precipitation between midnight Sunday and 2 p.m. yesterday.

The amount of liquid precipitation in a snowstorm varies from storm to storm, Brown said. When it's cold, snow can be fluffier and pile higher. When it's warmer there may be more of a mix, resulting in lower snow totals but higher levels of liquid.

The results are reported to the National Weather Service by "cooperative observers" - volunteers who live near the Concord Municipal Airport, Brown said. Records have been tracked in Concord since 1870.

There are two ways to collect precipitation from snow. With an automated system, which Concord has, accumulation falls into an 8-inch tin, known in weather terms as a standard rain gauge, Brown said. When snow falls into the can, a heated tube in the center melts it down and it is measured as a liquid. Otherwise, the observer brings the can inside, melts snow down manually and reports the results to the National Weather Service.

The precipitation conundrum brings back memories of last season's close-but-no-cigar snow accumulation, when Concord's 119.5-inch tally fell a few inches short of 1873's record of 122 inches. The National Weather Service upped the tally to 119.5 inches from 118 inches after the Monitor reported in April that Concord's official snow observer, DeAnne Fortier, had measured 119.7 inches for the season. The added inches, however, weren't enough to break the record.

If New Hampshire didn't already break the precipitation record Sunday, there are still nine days left to do so.

"We should know by (today)," Feerick said. "If the record hasn't been broken, we're just short and we'll probably break it anyway."

And even if we don't break a liquid precipitation record, second place isn't bad; it's more than the 55.25 inches that fell in 2006, the second highest rate, for now.

Three factors added to more precipitation this year, according to Eric Hoffman, professor and chairman of the atmospheric science and meteorology program at Plymouth State University: snow from late 2007 through May this year, heavy rainfall this summer and the roughly 20 inches that have so far fallen this month.

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