Weather Words: 'Blizzard'

This story originally appeared in the Morning Brief email newsletter. Sign up here to get more stories like this and weekday weather updates from The Weather Channel and our meteorologists.

The official National Weather Service definition of a blizzard is “a storm which contains large amounts of snow OR blowing snow, with winds in excess of 35 mph and visibilities of less than a quarter-mile for an extended period of time (at least 3 hours).”

For a word we all use and know so well, the origins of “blizzard” are mysterious. Merriam-Webster says that the earliest recorded appearance of the word in its meteorological context was in a newspaper article published in Estherville, Iowa, in 1870. However, the word was used as early as the 1830s to mean (variously) a rifle blast or a blast of words. The person who used it then was none other than Davy Crockett.

Ready To Learn More? Here Are Some Recent Weather Words You May Have Missed:

• G​rowlers
• H​ibernacle
• M​omijigari
• S​t. Elmo's Fire
• W​hite Squall

Y​ou can find our entire archive of Weather Words here.

The Weather Company’s primary journalistic mission is to report on breaking weather news, the environment and the importance of science to our lives. This story does not necessarily represent the position of our parent company, IBM.