70 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 70 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
Visibility must also plunge for three hours or more; heavy snowfall is not actually required.
Q 02How far must visibility fall for a snowstorm to count as a blizzard in the United States?
A quarter mile or less
Canada uses the same 400-metre threshold but a lower wind speed of 40 km/h.
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
Its first recorded weather use, in 1829, simply meant a 'violent blow'; it became common in newspapers during the 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 January 1978 storm over Ohio was classed by the National Weather Service as a rare severe blizzard, its highest grade of winter storm.
Q 06In Antarctica, blizzards are driven by winds spilling off the ice plateau at roughly what average speed?
99 mph (160 km/h)
These katabatic winds are gravity-fed: dense cold air simply pours downhill off the ice sheet toward the coast.
Q 07In which year did Iran suffer the deadliest blizzard in recorded history?
1972
About 200 villages were reportedly buried and wiped from the map by up to 26 feet of snow.
Q 08Roughly how many people died in the deadliest blizzard on record, in Iran?
4,000
Snow fell for up to a week, temperatures hit −25 °C and food and medicine ran out in the buried villages.
Q 09How deep did the snow get in parts of southern Iran during its record-breaking blizzard?
About 26 feet (7.9 m)
Contemporary reports said the city of Ardakan and villages around it were hit hardest, with no survivors in some.
Q 10On March 12, 1888, New York City's temperature fell from 33 °F to what as rain turned to snow?
8 °F
The next day the city recorded a low of 6 °F, the coldest so late in the season, and a high of only 12.
Q 11Snowdrifts from the Great Blizzard of 1888 reportedly exceeded what height?
50 feet
Drifts averaged 30 to 40 feet, over the roofs of houses from New York to New England, with some said to cover three-story homes.
Q 12Which New York town recorded the Great Blizzard of 1888's top total of 58 inches of snow?
Saratoga Springs
Albany got 48 inches and New Haven 45, while New York City itself measured 22.
Q 13The transport gridlock of the Great Blizzard of 1888 helped inspire which piece of infrastructure?
America's first underground subway
Boston's opened nine years later, and New York's first underground line followed in 1904.
Q 21Besides 'White Hurricane' and 'Big Blow', what was the 1913 Great Lakes Storm's third nickname?
The Freshwater Fury
It battered ships on four of the five lakes, worst of all Lake Huron.
Q 22How many ships were destroyed outright in the Great Lakes Storm of 1913?
19
Another 19 were stranded and more than 250 people died, making it the deadliest natural disaster in Great Lakes history.
Q 23Which ship was found floating upside-down off Michigan after the 1913 storm?
Charles S. Price
The 504-foot freighter capsized on Lake Huron; the Edmund Fitzgerald sank in a different November gale, in 1975.
Q 14After the 1888 blizzard downed its lines, what did New York City start doing with its telegraph wires?
Burying them underground
The storm had cut off Montreal and most of the big northeastern cities from each other for days.
Q 15For how many days did the New York Stock Exchange close during the Great Blizzard of 1888?
Two
Roscoe Conkling, a powerful Republican senator, died a few weeks after trying to walk home through the storm.
Q 16The Great Blizzard of 1888 wrecked over 200 ships between New England and which bay?
Chesapeake Bay
At least 100 seamen died in the wrecks along the coast.
Q 17The 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 18The Schoolhouse Blizzard's official death toll of 235 makes it what on the world list of winter storms?
The 10th deadliest on record
Some estimates run to 1,000 dead across the Plains, many of them children walking home from one-room schools.
Q 19Nebraska 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 20The 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 24Which city got 22 inches of snow and 79 mph winds in the 1913 storm and was paralyzed for days?
Cleveland
Duluth and Chicago were also hit as the storm crossed the whole lakes region.
Q 25The Knickerbocker Storm of 1922 was named after a building that collapsed in which city?
Washington, D.C.
The roof of the Knickerbocker Theatre gave way just after 9 p.m., killing 98 people and injuring 133.
Q 26How many people were killed when the Knickerbocker Theatre roof collapsed in 1922?
98
Roughly 22,400 square miles of the Northeast got 20 inches or more of snow from the storm.
Q 27The Armistice Day Blizzard of 1940 is remembered in Minnesota partly for killing large numbers of whom?
Duck hunters
Hundreds had taken the unseasonably warm morning off to hunt along the Mississippi; hunters were about half of the 49 deaths in Minnesota.
Q 28Which famous structure did the storm system behind the 1940 Armistice Day Blizzard destroy days earlier?
The Tacoma Narrows Bridge
'Galloping Gertie' twisted itself apart on November 7, 1940 in a 40 mph wind.
Q 29Which future NFL coach was caught duck hunting in the Armistice Day Blizzard?
Bud Grant
He survived and went on to lead the Minnesota Vikings to four Super Bowls.
Q 30How many deaths were blamed on the Armistice Day Blizzard of 1940?
146
Temperatures fell 50 °F in places, and snow piled into 20-foot drifts across six states.