noun phrase or not subsumed into the word snow

Question

Do you say (1) "There was three feet of snow" or (2) "There were three feet of snow" when referencing the amount of snow and NOT three-feet made of snow!

I.e. is the phrase "three feet of snow" plural or singular and is it describing the snow or is the snow describing the three feet?

Of course it would help if you could explain why this is so, and of course a source reference.

According to this NGram, there's not much to choose between singular/plural there was / were* three feet of snow. But my preferred version ([There was three foot of snow*](https://www.google.com/search?tbm=bks&q=%22There+was+three+foot+of%22)) apparently doesn't occur sufficiently often to show on the chart at all. — FumbleFingers, May 12 '21 at 13:01
Related if not duplicates: “Five foot ten” or “five feet ten”? and “6-foot tall” or “6-feet tall”? and X feet long/high versus (a/an) x-foot. — FumbleFingers, May 12 '21 at 13:06

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered May 12 '21 at 14:57

As you said, you're not 'counting feet' - you are stating an overall measurement as an attribute of the snow.

When you are using any kind of measurement such as feet, miles, gallons etc as an adjective, you can use the singular form.

For example:

I drove 6 miles (measurement)
I had a 6-mile drive (adjective operating on 'drive')

So you could say "there was a 6-foot snowdrift".

However, keeping the structure of your example, you are talking about '6 feet of snow', so you should keep the plural 'feet'), but as "snow" is a non-count noun, you should not use 'were', as this refers to the snow, not the 'feet'.

So, it should be:

There was 6 feet of snow.

Notice this headline from the NY Post: Buffalo is buried under 6 feet of snow

noun phrase or not subsumed into the word snow

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