The NWS issues a Blizzard Warning when falling and/or blowing snow combines with strong winds to create dangerously low visibility over at least a three hour period. The threshold for wind is frequent gusts over 30 knots and visibility is frequently less than a quarter mile. The featured chart looks at meeting that criteria based on automated airport weather stations that were under the Blizzard Warning. The three panels uses different methodologies to summarize the best (closest to meeting criteria) values based on wind speed and visibility. The first panel uses a strict requirement on all reported winds and visibility, the second panel takes the three hour average and the third panel uses the median value over the three hour period. Verifying blizzards with automated weather station data is difficult, but so is it for a human as we tend to not want to stay outside for three hour stretches in very bad winter weather.

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Tags:   blizzard