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After using Yahoo! to search on the term "blizzard," we found several explanations in the new Blizzard sub-category of our Weather Phenomena category. We first visited the Snow Almanac, a web page that offered the U.S. Weather Bureau's definition of a blizzard: A snowstorm with winds of at least 35 mph, temperatures 20 degrees Fahrenheit or lower over the period of the storm is a plain "blizzard." A severe blizzard has 45 mph or greater winds, blowing snow and temperatures at 10 degrees Fahrenheit or below.
According to a web site from WHYY-TV, a public broadcasting station, in addition to winds of 35 mph, for a storm to be considered a blizzard the winds must blow for at least three consecutive hours, and the visibility has to be less than one-quarter of a mile because of falling or blowing snow. An explanation of different types of winter weather warnings from the National Weather service corroborates that definition. The aforementioned Snow Almanac also gives an account of the first time a snow storm was refer to as a blizzard in the U.S. In the 1870s, an Iowa newspaper used the word to describe a local storm. Previous to that
cited usage, the term referred to a cannon shot or a volley of musket fire, but by the 1880s, "blizzard" was used in the U.S. and England to describe snow storms.
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