Blizzards Trivia
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67 free Blizzards trivia questions with answers — nature quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
A blizzard is not just a lot of snow. It is wind, whiteout and time, and the storms that meet the definition have rerouted history: the Great Blizzard of 1888 pushed New York to bury its wires and dig a subway, the Schoolhouse Blizzard caught Plains children walking home on a warm January afternoon, and the 1972 Iran blizzard buried whole villages under 26 feet of snow. This quiz covers the science and the stories in one place. You will meet the National Weather Service's 35 mph and quarter-mile rules, ground blizzards and whiteouts, the Freshwater Fury that sank ships across the Great Lakes in 1913, the Knickerbocker Theatre roof collapse, duck hunters lost in the Armistice Day storm, Buffalo's frozen Lake Erie in 1977, the Cleveland Superbomb, Boston's Blizzard of '78 and the Beanpot, the 1993 Storm of the Century that snowed on Alabama, and the newsroom coinages Snowmageddon and Snowzilla. Easy questions suit any weather watcher; the hard ones are for people who know their millibars. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on blizzards and the individual storms, and the supporting sentence is attached to each question. If you like this, try our quizzes on snow and on hurricanes.
30 of 67 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Under the US National Weather Service definition, a blizzard needs sustained winds or gusts of at least how many mph?
35 mph
The National Weather Service requires sustained winds or frequent gusts of 35 mph (56 km/h) or more together with falling or blowing snow that cuts visibility; heavy snowfall itself is not required.
Q 02How far must visibility fall for a snowstorm to count as a blizzard in the United States?
A quarter mile or less
US criteria require visibility frequently reduced to a quarter mile (400 metres) or less by falling or blowing snow; a storm with deep snow but better visibility is a winter storm, not a blizzard.
Q 03What distinguishes a 'ground blizzard' from an ordinary one?
Old snow blown by wind, with nothing falling
No precipitation falls at the time; loose surface snow simply gets picked up, which is why the Northern Plains can have whiteouts under clear skies.
Q 04The Oxford English Dictionary suggests 'blizzard' is onomatopoeic and related to which words?
Blow, blast, blister and bluster
The OED judges 'blizzard' probably onomatopoeic, akin to blow, blast, blister and bluster; the word spread through American newspapers during the hard winter of 1880-81.
Q 05A 'severe blizzard' has winds over 45 mph, near-zero visibility, and temperatures at or below what?
10 °F (−12 °C)
The National Weather Service's 'severe blizzard' category requires temperatures of 10 °F (−12 °C) or lower alongside winds above 45 mph and near-zero visibility; the January 1978 storm over Ohio met that rare standard.
Q 06In Antarctica, blizzards are driven by winds spilling off the ice plateau at roughly what average speed?
99 mph (160 km/h)
Antarctic blizzards ride katabatic winds averaging about 99 mph (160 km/h): dense, cold air pours downhill off the ice sheet under gravity toward the coast.
Q 07In which year did Iran suffer the deadliest blizzard in recorded history?
1972
The blizzard struck Iran from 3 to 9 February 1972, a week of snow that buried about 200 villages and ended a four-year drought.
Q 08Roughly how many people died in the deadliest blizzard on record, in Iran?
4,000
About 4,000 people died as a week of snow cut off villages across southern and northwestern Iran, where temperatures fell to −25 °C and food and medicine ran out before rescuers arrived.
Q 09How deep did the snow get in parts of southern Iran during its record-breaking blizzard?
About 26 feet (7.9 m)
Drifts reached about 26 feet (7.9 m) in southern Iran; the area around Ardakan was hit hardest, with entire villages buried and no survivors found in some.
Q 10Snowdrifts from the Great Blizzard of 1888 reportedly exceeded what height?
50 feet
Contemporary reports put drifts at over 50 feet (15 m) in places, against an average of 30 to 40 feet, high enough to bury three-story houses from New York to New England.
Q 11Which New York town recorded the Great Blizzard of 1888's top total of 58 inches of snow?
Saratoga Springs
Saratoga Springs measured 58 inches (147 cm), the storm's highest official total; New Haven recorded 45 inches and New York City 22.
Q 12The transport gridlock of the Great Blizzard of 1888 helped inspire which piece of infrastructure?
America's first underground subway
The paralysis of elevated trains and streetcars pushed cities to put transit underground: Boston's Tremont Street Subway, America's first, opened in 1897 and New York's first underground line in 1904.
Q 13After the 1888 blizzard downed its lines, what did New York City start doing with its telegraph wires?
Q 21How many ships were destroyed outright in the Great Lakes Storm of 1913?
19
The storm destroyed 19 ships outright and stranded 19 more; with more than 250 dead it was the deadliest natural disaster in the lakes' recorded history.
Q 22Which ship was found floating upside-down off Michigan after the 1913 storm?
Charles S. Price
The Charles S. Price, a 504-foot freighter, was the 'mystery ship' found floating hull-up off Port Huron on Lake Huron; the Edmund Fitzgerald sank in a different November gale, in 1975.
Q 23Which city got 22 inches of snow and 79 mph winds in the 1913 storm and was paralyzed for days?
Cleveland
Cleveland took 22 inches of snow on winds of 79 mph, with streetcars stalled and power and telephone lines down for days; Duluth and Chicago were also hit as the storm crossed the lakes region.
Burying them underground
The storm had cut off Montreal and most of the big northeastern cities from each other for days.
Q 14For how many days did the New York Stock Exchange close during the Great Blizzard of 1888?
Two
The New York Stock Exchange shut for two days, March 12 and 13; Roscoe Conkling, a former Republican senator, died five weeks later from exposure suffered walking home through the storm.
Q 15The Great Blizzard of 1888 wrecked over 200 ships between New England and which bay?
Chesapeake Bay
From Chesapeake Bay north to New England more than 200 vessels were grounded or wrecked in the storm, and at least 100 seamen died.
Q 16The Schoolhouse Blizzard of January 1888 was so deadly largely because it struck under what conditions?
Suddenly, on a relatively warm day during school hours
Temperatures had climbed 20 to 40 °F ahead of the front, luring people out to do chores and send children to school.
Q 17Which author's 2004 book The Children's Blizzard chronicles the Schoolhouse Blizzard?
David Laskin
David Laskin's 2004 book The Children's Blizzard reconstructed the 12 January 1888 storm through the families of Nebraska and Dakota Territory homesteaders; the title reflects the many schoolchildren among the dead.
Q 18Nebraska teacher Minnie Freeman became famous during the Schoolhouse Blizzard for doing what?
Leading 13 children safely from her school to her home
Her mile-and-a-half trek in Mira Valley made her a national heroine; songs and poems were written about it.
Q 19The Schoolhouse Blizzard was triggered by an Arctic cold front colliding with warm moist air from where?
The Gulf of Mexico
Within hours the front dropped temperatures from just above freezing to −20 °F, and to −40 °F in some places.
Q 20Besides 'White Hurricane' and 'Big Blow', what was the 1913 Great Lakes Storm's third nickname?
The Freshwater Fury
The 1913 storm was also called the 'Freshwater Fury' for its hurricane-force winds over four of the five lakes; Lake Huron suffered worst, where eight ships went down with all hands.
Q 24The Knickerbocker Storm of 1922 was named after a building that collapsed in which city?
Washington, D.C.
The Knickerbocker Theatre on 18th Street in Washington, D.C., lost its flat roof under 28 inches of snow during a Saturday-night film showing on 28 January 1922; the disaster gave the storm its name.
Q 25How many people were killed when the Knickerbocker Theatre roof collapsed in 1922?
98
The collapse killed 98 people and injured 133; among the dead was former Pennsylvania congressman Andrew Jackson Barchfeld, and the theatre's architect later took his own life.
Q 26The Armistice Day Blizzard of 1940 is remembered in Minnesota partly for killing large numbers of whom?
Duck hunters
Unseasonable morning warmth had drawn hundreds of duck hunters onto the Mississippi backwaters; trapped on islands and sandbars by the sudden freeze, they made up about half of Minnesota's 49 deaths.
Q 27Which famous structure did the storm system behind the 1940 Armistice Day Blizzard destroy days earlier?
The Tacoma Narrows Bridge
The Tacoma Narrows Bridge, nicknamed 'Galloping Gertie', twisted itself apart in a 40 mph wind on 7 November 1940 as the Pacific storm that later became the Armistice Day Blizzard came ashore.
Q 28Which future NFL coach, then a 13-year-old, was caught outdoors in the Armistice Day Blizzard?
Bud Grant
Bud Grant, then a 13-year-old from Superior, Wisconsin, was caught outdoors by the storm and survived; he later coached the Minnesota Vikings to four Super Bowls.
Q 29About how many deaths were blamed on the Armistice Day Blizzard of 1940?
146
The storm was blamed for about 146 deaths across the Midwest, including 66 sailors lost on the lakes; temperatures fell 50 °F in places and snow piled into 20-foot drifts.
Q 30The 1950 Great Appalachian Storm set a November record low of 3 °F in which southern city?
Atlanta
Atlanta fell to 3 °F, a November record for the city, and Birmingham to 5 °F as Arctic air poured down the east side of the Appalachians; hurricane-force winds cut power to about a million customers in the Northeast.