Our snow is being measured in watery form. So, ten cm of snow would get registered as 1 cm of precipitation. Of course there would be tales about how many cm of snow, but what counts is the precipitation.
Depends on why you're measuring it. Even if it's fluffed up, sheer cm/inches matter in terms of visibility (which is still a MAJOR problem here at intersections).
If it is about how much precipitation has fallen, it is very accurate. If it is about what it will do for traffic and such, not only the amount of snow counts, but also how even it is spread. For reasons like that they will certainly talk about the amount of cm of snow, either overall, or warn for dunes from a certain size.
