Meteorological Conditions of a Blizzard

Abstract

As used to signify a certain type of snowstorm primarily characterised by fine, dry, powdery, or sand-like snow driven before a gale of wind, the temperature of which is extremely low (say 20° below zero F.), the term “blizzard” is, of course, wholly inapplicable in the British Isles; and it is, moreover, ridiculous to apply the name to every little occurrence of sleet after the manner of the daily Press, referred to by Mr. Dines. But there is another type of severe snowstorm peculiar to damp, stormy, and relatively warm winter climates like our own, the natural breeding-grounds of which are the wild tracts of bleak, elevated moorland which cover so much of the north of England and Scotland; and I fail to see why “blizzard”, which, after all, comes from the same root as “blast”, should not be as expressive of a British moorland snow gale, with its relatively large damp flakes, as it is of the fine dry crystals of North America or the polar regions, produced by meteorological conditions practically unknown in this country. The huge falls of snow swept by heavy gales which isolated many high-lying districts of Great Britain for weeks together in February and March of the present year (see Symons's Meteorological Magazine for April), bringing in a few weeks an aggregate depth of some 10 ft. to the Black Mountains in South Wales, were, it seems to me, not inappropriately described as “blizzards”; but for the sake of distinction it might be advisable to restrict the use of the term to the American type of storm.