Here is what I saw in the article "Storm dumps snow, sleet from Midwest to Northeast states" on Page F8 in the Ottawa Citizen 2000-02-19.
New York City picked up at least eight centimetres inches of snow.
Obviously, it is a botched attempt to convert the number from inches to centimetres.
Without unambiguous standard of notation, there is no telling whether a dollar is "$ CAD" or "$ USD", a volume is an Imperial or U.S., or even which version of "horse power" is used. Priority should be given to SI/metric units with other units in brackets, as follows.
New York City picked up at least 20 centimetres (8 inches) of snow.
In addition to spell check and grammar check, each number in an article should be analysed and necessary conversion be made in order to conform with this standardised format. I would be able to write software code in AppleScript to automate the task :-).
