Well, I can tell you what it's like when 17" falls on warm ground then melts within 24 hours. Fortunately it rained for a few hours before it changed to snow so it loosened up the surface, then add the weight of the goop that piled up and things got kind of slidey. Steep hillsides sagged, road cuts sloughed and even the steep landscaping stuff in my neighborhood shifted as the snow melted. With the 40+ inch numbers they got here in the 1888 storm I can only imagine the chaos it caused.