Blizzard
2 of the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf carry an entry for Blizzard. Both are reproduced below, so you can see where they agree and where they differ.
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
a severe snowstorm. A genuine blizzard is heralded by a mild thaw drawn suddenly to a close by a black, lowering sky, and is characterized by a furious wind, blinding fine snow, and extreme cold. The famous blizzard of January, 1888, extended from North Dakota to Texas. The thermometer fell suddenly in localities from 74 deg. F. to --40 deg. F. The total loss of human life is not known, but 235 deaths were recorded. Snow sifted through the walls of straw stables and packed in around the animals as they stood. Only the stoutest survived until dug out. Many cattle, tramping the snow beneath them, broke out through the flat straw roofs and fled before the storm. Some reached groves and other places of safety. Others were impaled on fences or fell into ravines, where they were found the next spring. The storm overwhelmed the cattle of the plains, involving the loss of millions of dollars. Branch railroad lines were so buried in snow that trains were abandoned till spring released them from the drifts. Heavy snowstorms along the Atlantic coast not infrequently block traffic, break down telegraph wires, and cause much loss of life and property. The velocity of the wind is quite as high, but the eastern storm lacks the extreme cold and the dust-like penetration of fine, dry snow that characterizes the western blizzard. See Snow ; Wind ; Weather Bureau Announced by all the trumpets of the sky, Arrives the snow, and, driving o'er the fields, Seems nowhere to alight: the whited air Hides hills and woods, the river and the heaven, And veils the farmhouse at the garden's end. The sled and traveler stopped, the courier's feet Delayed, all friends shut out, the housemates sit Around the radiant fireplace, inclosed In a tumultuous privacy of storm. --Emerson, The Snowstorm.
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
a modern American word whose origin is in doubt. As applied to a severe snow storm the word came into general use in the American newspapers during the bitterly cold winter of 1880- 1881, although some papers claim its use as early as the '70's. It is employed in the Western States to describe a peculiarly fierce and cold wind, accompanied by a very fine, blinding snow which suffocates as well as freezes men and animals exposed to it. One of the most severe of these storms recorded in the West was that of January, 1888, which extended from Dakota to Texas. The thermometer in some places fell from 74° above to 28° below zero, and in Dakota to 40° below. The number of deaths amounted to 235. The blizzard which will long be remembered in the Eastern States began March 11, 1888, and raged until the 14th, New York and Philadelphia being the cities most affected.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
Collier's called blizzard in 1921 a modern American word whose origin is in doubt, and the etymology is still unsettled, though dictionaries now trace its snowstorm sense to an Iowa newspaper of 1870. The storms themselves have not changed, but the warning has: the National Weather Service now defines a blizzard precisely as winds of 35 miles an hour or more with blowing snow cutting visibility below a quarter mile for three hours or longer, and weather satellites, begun with TIROS in 1960, plus Doppler radar give days of notice rather than the clear mild morning that trapped schoolchildren in January 1888. Deaths on the scale of that storm's 235 are now rare in the United States; the big modern blizzards, such as the March 1993 Superstorm and January 2016, kill largely through traffic, exposure and heart attacks while shovelling. What has not changed is the loss of livestock on the plains, where storms like the October 2013 blizzard in South Dakota still killed tens of thousands of cattle.
Written for this edition, 2026.