WHEELING — Depending on one’s attitudes toward driving, the cold, and sledding, locals may have mixed feelings about the snow. One thing everyone can agree on, though, is that there’s a lot of it.

While the area may be seeing more snow this season than expected, the National Weather Service said the Ohio Valley is seeing an above average, but not excessive, amount of snow this winter. Meteorologist Pat Herald, operating out of the NWS forecast office in Moon, Pennsylvania, described the weather system as an upper troughing pattern with embedded shortwaves, which allows cold air to filter southward. The shortwaves within the cloud produce snowfall.

Such a pattern, he said, was not at all uncommon, occurring every couple winters. So far this year, the area has received around 50 inches of snowfall — more than the average year, but well short of the record 80 inches.

The area remained under a winter storm warning until 1 p.m. Tuesday. Until then, residents could see between 1 and 3 more inches of snow and between a tenth to a quarter of an inch of ice. Travel could be compromised and power outages and tree damage could happen.

“We’re having a little more snowfall this winter, temperatures have been a little above average each month,” Herald said Monday. “When you have clouds and precipitation, it limits temperature spread — on a clear night, you have a large spread that drops off in the morning. We’re missing that this year, and we’re not getting relatively warm lows due to the moisture in the air.

“The record snowfall is 80 inches,” he continued. “We approached that in 2010, when we got 77 inches of snowfall that year. We’re way below that still.

“The averages are made up of extremes. If you had average snowfall each year, you’d be having problems. This all falls under the weather variability for this area, and variability is what makes up averages.”

However, by the time spring has sprung, Herald said he wouldn’t be surprised if this winter broke through the top 10 snowiest years. More precipitation is expected later this week, with Herald saying that around three inches of mixed precipitation could fall.

“If this year isn’t the ninth (snowiest on record), we’ll be around there. We’re 10 inches above average, especially after this storm.”

With such a snowy February, Herald said it was difficult to say when the end of winter could be coming. He said the NWS was hoping for a more gentle March, but that he wasn’t holding his breath.

“March is usually a pretty active month, so we’re just going to have to wait and see,” he said.