STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- Slush and ice-hardened mounds as tall as an elephant's eye.

Sliding cars and stalled school buses.

Constantly-used shovels that seem, now, to be appendages.

To say this has been the winter of Staten Islanders' discontent may be as big an understatement as the height of the city's official 40.3-inch snowfall total this season as of Thursday. The typical amount to that point of winter is about 14 inches, according to the National Weather Service.

But there was a time when legions of borough residents welcomed packed powder.

Roll back the calendar 80 years or so to the 1930s when Staten Island had its very own ski jump.

About 30 feet tall, it towered above the landscape on the north side of Todt Hill near the current site of the Petrides School in Sunnyside, according to Daniel Kusrow.

And the New Brighton resident has the evidence to prove it -- three photos of a 1941 ski-jumping meet on Staten Island.

Kusrow told the Advance he collects old photos and postcards of Staten Island, and picked up the ski-jump shots about 10 years ago at Everything Goes thrift shop in Tompkinsville.

"Well, that's pretty cool," he recalled thinking. "I just found it very interesting."

Kusrow thought the ski-jumping shots were particularly timely now, given the recent start of the 2014 Winter Olympic Games in Sochi, Russia.

And in a historic first, woman ski jumpers have been green-lighted to participate.

According to Advance reports, the ski jump was built sometime in the early 1930s and was destroyed by fire in the 1940s during World War II.

Three-stories high, it contained wooden slats, which skiers climbed up to a platform where they started their jump.

Skiers flew northeastward, sailing toward open ground which is now the Staten Island Expressway.

After the jump, they'd cross a dirt road to an incline near Aymar Avenue and Little Clove Road and then head back to the platform.

To pack the slope, skiers would ask local kids to carry bushel-baskets of snow to the tower and spread it out.

If snow wasn't plentiful, they'd line the slope with straw to continue jumping.

Many ski-jumpers were Norwegian natives, active in the Nansen Lodge in Travis, said Advance reports.

In fact, Torge Tokle, a champion from Norway, drew a large crowd from the five boroughs and New Jersey in 1940 to watch him jump here.

Despite its destruction, the ski jump enjoyed a brief resurrection in 1947.

Local enthusiasts and several Staten Island Ski Club members rebuilt the jump to about half the original structure's size and enjoyed it for a short time, Advance reports said.

As for present day, skiing-jumping enthusiasts will have to settle for watching the Olympics.

And that's too bad, because snow has abounded this year.

In a typical winter, based on the past 30 years, the city sees about 26 inches of snow for the entire season, said David Stark of the National Weather Service in Upton, L.I.

We've already surpassed that total by 14 inches, just beyond the halfway point.

More snow was predicated for this weekend.

While it's not the massive blizzard chillingly forecast on social media last week, a few inches could add on to those unsightly graying piles on the front lawn and at curbside, Stark said on Thursday.

"It doesn't look like a big system," he said.