Comments by "Sar Jim" (@sarjim4381) on "The \"Long Winter\" of 1880/81" video.

  1. The meteorological characteristics of a blizzard are either large amounts of falling snow or blowing snow, winds greater than 35 mph, and, most importantly, visibilities of less than 1/4 mile for at least three hours. Many of the things called blizzards in the popular press are actually just heavy snow since they don't meet the technical qualifications of a blizzard. The public also has the idea that blizzards have large amounts of falling snow. You can have a blizzard, commonly called a ground blizzard, when there's no falling snow at all. Those winds pick up snow already on the ground and blow it around to reduce the visibility to that 1/4 mile or less, and generally pile up the moving snow into huge drifts. Some of the worst blizzards we've had in terms of their effects on human and animal life have been ground blizzards. Since no or very little snow falls with these blizzards, they don't tend to make it into the record books that only look at total snowfall.
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