Hello and welcome to the VOA Learning English program Words and Their Stories!

People all over the world love to talk about the weather.

Today, we talk about expressions that come from extreme winter weather.

Winters in the northern United States are cold and snowy.

Sometimes, the snows come with extremely strong winds.

These snowstorms are called blizzards.

It is difficult to see through the fast blowing snow of a blizzard.

So, they are often described as blinding.

The dictionary Etymology Online says blizzard came to mean a severe snow storm during the late 1800s.

Before then, the word blizzard had nothing to do with snow.