# TellTale signs of a Blizzard



## Riptide (Dec 14, 2015)

It's never really snowed where I live so I don't know how it progresses. I was figuring just like a rain storm, dark clouds, heavy air, but really... I don't know.


----------



## Deleted member 56686 (Dec 14, 2015)

Basically a blizzard is a lot of heavy snow with very windy conditions. I guess it's like a bad thunderstorm minus the thunder and lightning (usually) but with snow instead of rain. Of course it is also quite cold. Sometimes visibility is so bad (what they call whiteouts) that you can't see what's in front of you. I've only seen a few blizzards in Baltimore and I know they're a lot worse in other areas, but that's been my experience with the very few I've seen.

Of course you can also expect a minimum of a foot and a half on the ground when it's over. Our worse blizzard was about two and a half feet in the end.


----------



## Red Sonja (Dec 14, 2015)

There's really no set way to tell unless you get to know a particular area. Updrafts/downdrafts, daily temps, terrain: All sorts of things figure into weather changes and the way a person can tell if his weather is about to change. 

If you have weather measuring instruments (i.e., barometer) then you might be able to tell a few hours in advance whether a predicted snow was about to turn into a blizzard, but as we all know even sophisticated instruments can be wrong. 

So this should not be depressing news for you, since you can pretty much engineer your own set of conditions based on the locale in your narrative -- except for the completely outlandish, of course: "It was the fourth of July and we were out setting off fireworks; suddenly it started to rain, then the wind blew, and suddenly Grandma cried out: 'There's a blizzard a'comin!'" 

The same conditions that cause it to snow (cold temperatures, moisture in the air, ground features conducive to temperature inversions, changing barometric pressures) will also cause a blizzard with just a bit of tweaking. Sometimes it's hard even for an experienced person -- let's say a person at sea, or a cattle rancher -- to know if a snow will turn into a monster snow. 

You are generally correct to think that a person who does not know snow can imagine a blizzard if s/he knows rain. A gentle rain can signal a cyclone, and sometimes it's impossible to know until the cyclone is occurring that it was possible for one to occur. Talking about people on the ground, without access to special scientific gadgets. 

There are lots of famous literary and historic accounts of bad snows; I was just looking at a recent book about the famous Donner party, travelers in early USA history who got stuck in a bad snow and started cannibalizing each other. They had some native American guides with them, I guess, and the guides realized the snow the party was traveling through was going to get bad via certain indicators. (Sorry, didn't read the book so I can't tell ya!) 

Speaking on my own behalf, I live in a place where it snows all the time but there aren't often blizzards because it's so mountainous and rocky; blizzards, just like tornadoes and hurricanes, tend to form over certain types of terrain. If an extremely heavy snow occurs here, it's usually already snowing and then just gets worse. They're not exactly unexpected. On a plain, it can just be snowing a little or not at all and then a few flakes, then some wind, then you notice gray clouds piling up on the horizon, and then BLAMMO suddenly you can barely see your hand in front of your face. Plains drivers, if they can't get off the highway in time, often are forced simply to pull over in a blizzard because visibility is so poor. 

I hope this helps!


----------



## Blade (Dec 14, 2015)

Red Sonja said:
			
		

> On a plain, it can just be snowing a little or not at all and then a few flakes, then some wind, then you notice gray clouds piling up on the horizon, and then BLAMMO suddenly you can barely see your hand in front of your face. Plains drivers, if they can't get off the highway in time, often are forced simply to pull over in a blizzard because visibility is so poor.



Red Sonja's whole post is good but this is an especially relevant point. Hilly, mountainous or contoured terrains tend to break up weather patterns whereas plains tend to concentrate them. Land forms are not the only culprit as lakes can exhibit the same effect even, in some cases, providing the system with moisture via evaporation.

The classic example of this is Buffalo, NY. which sometimes receives extensive snowfall due to its position at the extreme eastern end of Lake Erie. (~1977)

Blizzards usually don't announce themselves with thunder and lightning like a thunderstorm but more or less just show up. :scratch:


----------



## ppsage (Dec 14, 2015)

> To be a blizzard, a snow storm must have sustained winds or frequent gusts that are greater than or equal to 56 km/h (35 mph) with blowing or drifting snow which reduces visibility to 400 m or 0.25 mi or less and must last for a prolonged period of time—typically three hours or more.


US Weather Service Glossary


----------



## Riis Marshall (Dec 15, 2015)

Hello Rip

If you look out your front window and all you can see of your car is the tip of the radio aerial and all you can see of your mailbox is that little springy latch on the door, these are telltale signs of a blizzard.

All the best with your writing.

Warmest regards
Riis


----------



## Ariel (Dec 15, 2015)

Snow also only forms at certain temperatures.  It has to be around freezing but too cold and it just turns to ice.  One of the worst reasons blizzards can be so dangerous around here is because they will often form after an ice storm and will bury the ice or it will be too cold for snow and we'll have ice instead.  Both can be really pretty but ice is a lot harder to drive on than snow.


----------



## shadowwalker (Dec 15, 2015)

Around here we always know when someone's a newbie to snow - every time we get any snow, "It's a blizzard! OMG!". But without the higher winds, it's just a snowfall.


----------



## caters (Dec 20, 2015)

I remember when I was in like 3rd or 2nd grade on the first day of spring(March 21st where I live) there was more than a foot of snow. I couldn't go to school because of all the snow(Plus it was the weekend and I never went to school on the weekends) and I didn't see any snow the evening before. The wind was calm after the storm. I didn't consider it a blizzard, just a snowstorm(partly because I was asleep during the storm so I didn't know how fast the wind was blowing during the storm but also because my dad could drive on the roads). My dad and I went sledding that day.


----------

