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This article is about the winter storm condition. For other uses, see Blizzard (disambiguation).
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This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding reliable references. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (February 2008) |
A blizzard is a severe winter storm condition characterized by low temperatures, strong winds, and heavy blowing snow. Blizzards are formed when a high pressure system, also known as a ridge, interacts with a low pressure system; this results in the advection of air from the high pressure zone into the low pressure area. The term blizzard is sometimes misused by news media to describe a large winter storm that does not actually satisfy official blizzard criteria.
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Even though some areas are more likely to experience blizzards than others, it is possible for a blizzard to occur in any location where there is snow and high winds. In North America, blizzards are particularly common to the extreme portions of the Northeastern United States, the Northern Great Plains in the United States, Atlantic Canada, and the Canadian Prairie Provinces. Blizzard conditions also occur frequently in the mountain ranges in western North America, however since these regions are sparsely populated they are often not reported.
According to Environment Canada, a winter storm must have winds of 40 km/h (25 mph) or more, have snow or blowing snow, visibility less than 1 km (about 5⁄8 mile), a wind chill of less than −25 °C (−13 °F), and that all of these conditions must last for 4 hours or more before the storm can be properly called a blizzard.
In the United States, the National Weather Service defines a blizzard as sustained 35 mph (56 km/h) winds which leads to blowing snow and causes visibilities of ¼ mile or less, lasting for at least 3 hours. Temperature is not taken into consideration when issuing a blizzard warning, but the nature of these storms are such that cold air is often present when the other criteria are met. NOAA - National Weather Service
Other countries, such as the UK, have a lower threshold: the Met Office defines a blizzard as "moderate or heavy snow" combined with a mean wind speed of 30 mph (48 km/h) and visibility below 650 feet (200 m).
When there are blizzard conditions but no snow falling, meteorologists call this a ground blizzard because all the snow is already present at the surface of the earth and is simply being blown by high winds. Ground blizzards require large expanses of open and relatively flat land with a sufficient amount of accumulated and loosely packed powdery snow to be blown around.
The origin of the word "blizzard" is believed to be a German settler describing a storm to an Estherville, Iowa, newspaper reporter in Marshall, a small town in southwestern Minnesota.Read, Allen (1930-02-01). ""Blizzard" Again". American Speech 5 (3): 232. doi:10.2307/451841. Retrieved on 2007-03-28.
An extreme form of blizzard is a whiteout, when downdrafts coupled with snowfall become so severe that it is impossible to distinguish the ground from the air. People caught in a whiteout can quickly become disoriented, losing their sense of direction. This poses an extreme risk to the aviation community when flying at the altitude of the storm or navigating an airport, severe ice accretion on the wings may also result.
The Word \'Blizzard\' was first used in 1870 during a severe snowstorm in Iowa and Minnesota, by an Estherville, Iowa newspaper. The word has its origins in boxing, referring to a volley of punches in Boxing. The word was first used by the USA signal corps weather service in 1876.
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This article or section deals primarily with the United States and does not represent a worldwide view of the subject. Please improve this article or discuss the issue on the talk page. |
Sudden blizzards can cause terrible damage like burying cars, trucks, and even a full locomotive under heavy snow.
The Great Blizzard of 1888 paralyzed the Northeastern United States. In that blizzard, 400 people were killed, 200 ships were sunk, and snowdrifts towered 15 to 50 feet high. Earlier that year, the Great Plains states were struck by the Schoolhouse Blizzard that left children trapped in schoolhouses and killed 235 people.A few years earlier, in 1880–1881, was a winter referred to in the Dakotas for many years afterward as the "Hard Winter". Author Laura Ingalls Wilder devoted her book The Long Winter to the telling of that winter\'s story, a narrative of one successive blizzard after another, and the effects on her family and those around her. The book is only slightly fictionalized, as far as her descriptions of the weather. Her tale of two men from the town of DeSmet, South Dakota going after some wheat rumored to be stored some miles south of DeSmet in February 1881 is true (Ingalls later married one of the men, Almanzo Wilder). It was speculated at the time that if the two men had not found and brought back the wheat, the residents would have starved before the eventual thaw in April which allowed the railroads to resume service. The snowbound locomotive pictured above was photographed on March 29, 1881, in western Minnesota,
Thirty-four people died during a three-day spring blizzard in March 1920 in North Dakota. Among them was Hazel Miner, a teenager who froze to death when she got lost on her way home from her one-room school but saved her younger siblings by covering them with her own body. Winds gusted up to 70 mph.
The Armistice Day Blizzard in 1940 caught many people off guard with its rapid and extreme temperature change. It was 60 °F in the morning, but by noon, it was snowing heavily. Some of those caught unprepared died by freezing to death in the snow and some while trapped in their cars. Altogether, 154 people died in the Armistice Day Blizzard. Unpredictable storms such as this one can come without much warning, causing damage and destruction to humans and infrastructure.
One hundred five years to the day (March 12) after the Great Blizzard of 1888, a massive blizzard, nicknamed the Storm of the Century, hit the U.S in 1993. It dropped snow over 26 states and reached as far north as Canada and as far south as Mexico. In many southern U.S. areas, such as parts of Alabama, more snow fell in this storm than ever fell in an entire winter. Highways and airports were closed across the U.S. As a wider effect, the storm spawned 15 tornadoes in Florida. When the storm was over, it affected at least half of the U.S. population; 270 people died and 48 were reported missing at sea.
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Snowdrifts made driving difficult in the 1977 blizzard in Buffalo, New York
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