Story highlights The State Department wants an extra month to publicly release former Secretary Hillary Clinton's official emails

Among the reasons: the blizzard hitting Washington is delaying the ability to review the documents

Washington (CNN) After misplacing about 7,000 pages of documents for several months, the State Department is now asking a federal judge for more time to release former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's emails, blaming the blizzard currently slamming Washington.

Lawyers for the department asked Judge Rudolph Contreras on Friday if State can release some of Clinton's emails on February 29, one month after it was initially supposed to turn over the last of the documents. That would also result in many emails not becoming public until after the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire and South Carolina primaries.

Contreras had ordered the State Department to stick to a monthly production schedule for the emails last May in response to a Freedom of Information Act Lawsuit brought by journalist Jason Leopold.

"Because the Clinton email team must perform its work onsite ... this storm will disrupt the Clinton email team's current plans to work a significant number of hours throughout the upcoming weekend and could affect the number of documents that can be produced on January 29, 2016," State's lawyers wrote.

Ryan James, a lawyer representing Leopold, told CNN Friday: "It's baffling why State needs a month to make up for only three days of snow-related office closures."

Read More