Fast-moving and cold, the Alberta clipper sweeps down out of Canada on a plunging jet stream, delivering a quick shot of snow and a hard drop in temperature.

Sometimes the plains conjure a blizzard without a single new flake, as a hard wind lifts the fallen snow and hurls it across the country under a bright and cloudless sky.

On the plains, the thermometer tells only half the story; it is the wind chill, the biting product of cold and wind, that governs life on a January morning.

No storm defines the northern plains like the blizzard, when wind and snow combine to erase the world and make even a walk to the barn a mortal gamble.