No blizzard warning.??

[timo]

just curious about something and I know your prolly swamped.
all day i was wondering when they'd be issuing a blizzard warning for where i'm at.
north about 35 miles of Milwaukee.
started snowing around 9:00am was all snow until 4:00. mixed with sleet for about an hour and a half and changed over to all snow the rest of the night.
The local weatherman said no blizzard warning due to the fact that sleet was mixed with snow? I don't really see why that matters?? I would think if you'd have snow sideways for 10 hours with a sleet mix for maybe 2 hours with the winds we had you'd have a blizzard warning.

 

[jd]

It's not really possible for me to say why a person or persons said or did something, that would have to come from them.

What I can say is that a blizzard is not about falling snow at all. It is about the reduction of visibility due to snow in the air. That snow in the air could be from blowing what is down already, or from falling, or both. The definition is: Sustained winds or frequent gusts of 35 mph or more with snow and blowing snow frequently reducing visibility to less than a quarter mile for 3 hours or more.

I would only be speculating why one was not issued, but perhaps the winds were worse than they had thought or that the winds were not in the range over a big enough area.

-John