What is a blizzard? Official criteria and where they hit the most

A blizzard isn't just heavy snow, it's heavy snow, winds of at least 35 miles an hour, visibility of quarter mile or less, all for at least three hours. And new snow doesn't actually have to be falling. Strong wind can actually lift snow already on the ground and create a ground blizzard. Now the northern plains gets hit harder than everybody else, as seen by the darker colors on this map. The Dakotas and Minnesota have a 60% chance of a blizzard every year, but they could happen anywhere on the purple shades of this map.