Short answers, pulled from the story.
The National Weather Service defines a blizzard as a storm with sustained winds of at least 40 miles per hour or frequent gusts of that magnitude combined with blowing or drifting snow that reduces visibility to less than 400 meters. The storm must persist for a minimum of three hours to earn the classification.
The word blizzard was first recorded in the context of weather in 1829 as a violent blow. This linguistic origin hints at the true nature of the phenomenon, which is defined not by the accumulation of snow, but by the ferocity of the wind.
The 1972 Iran blizzard caused 4,000 reported deaths and stands as the deadliest blizzard in recorded history. Dropping as much as 1.5 meters of snow, it completely covered 200 villages and left the population with no means of survival.
The massive explosion of the volcano Krakatoa in the South Pacific late in August 1883 is a suspected cause of the huge blizzards that plagued the Great Plains and Eastern United States during the three-year winter period from December 1885 to March 1888. The eruption injected an unusually large amount of sulfur dioxide gas high into the stratosphere, which reflects sunlight and helps cool the planet over the next few years.
The Great Blizzard of 1993 formed over the Gulf of Mexico on the 12th of March 1993 and dissipated in the North Atlantic Ocean on March 15. A total of 310 people, including 10 from Cuba, perished during this storm, which cost between 6 and 10 billion dollars in damages.