Well, blizzards here on the plains can be pretty severe. With nary a tree or rock on the mile after mile stretch of open plains the straight line winds in a blizzard can hit 30 mph or more. Even when the snow stops it can be a white-out situation, with visibility limited to the end of your arm. Combine this with wind chills of -50 to -100 F you have a dangerous situation. With no natural cover and no visibility you can die pretty quickly from hypothermia.

Farm families, especially in years past, relied on themselves and had little hired help. Livestock still needed to be tended and you could easily lose most of your animals. Trips to round up cattle or sheep could be dangerous but failure to do so could be your financial ruin. Just going out to the barn to milk the cows or feed the animals could be risky in those conditions. Dad told me of a friend from school that died in that situation when he was young, and he told it happened more often in his dad's time. In fact, his dad is the one that strung the rope to the outbuildings, to prevent him or his brother from wandering off and freezing to death.

If you've never been in a bad blizzard out in the open it's hard to understand just how disorienting it is. Wind stings your eyes, blinding you. There's no way to tell direction and no visible landmarks. You could be fifty feet from your front door and never see it. And your outbuildings are a way away (if you've smelled a barn you know why it's not 30 feet from your house!). Our barn was about 120 yards from the house, our garage was maybe 50 yards. If it's -35 F (the coldest temps I recall as a kid) you won't last long out in 40 mph winds. When my dad's dad was a kid they didn't have electricity, and even my dad didn't have it til he was maybe 10. So no porch light to follow, even if you could make it out through the storm (and you may not be able to, especially in the day time). Pretty dangerous at night.

It's not a person but we lost a dog to a blizzard when I was a kid. Dad's spaniel 'Clem' was out in his doghouse; it was well insulated and heated, and he had a leash clipped to a wire run between stakes so he could run around. Dad sent my brother and sister out to make sure he was in the doghouse during a bad storm. They ran out and didn't see him, and thought he was inside. The next day we found him at the end of his run, frozen stiff. The leash got tangled on something and he couldn't get to his doghouse. He was pretty much frozen solid, poor little guy.