The Great Blizzard of 1888
The White Hurricane
In an age of instant communication, it’s hard to imagine that a storm of the magnitude of the Great Blizzard of 1888 barreled its way up the East Coast and no one knew it was coming. Beginning its steady march up the coastal states Sunday, March 11, the storm’s cold, drenching rain quickly turned to heavy snow as it collided with a growing cold front and subzero temperatures. Hurricane-force winds downed telegraph, telephone, and electrical wires, cutting off all communication and paralyzing nearly all commerce and industry from Washington, D.C. to New England. Tossed about by the whipping wind, 200 ships in the coastal waters sank and hundreds more were damaged.
By daylight Monday morning, New York City was in the grips of a paralyzing blizzard. Commuter trains from outside the city were stalled on elevated tracks, leaving their stranded passengers cold and frightened in cars assailed by savage winds, and frantic for rescuers to lead them down shaky ladders. Distraught family members waited anxiously for their loved ones to return home.
It’s fury unremitting, the storm continued to pummel New York for three days, halting transportation and stranding more than a thousand travelers in idled trains without food or heat, and shutting down food and fuel deliveries. With no one to light the gas street lights, the city was wrapped in eerie darkness. Dumping 22 inches of snow on New York City by the time it ended on March 14, the storm’s unrelenting wind—some gusts as high as 80 miles per hour—left snow drifts of 20 to 30 feet, which once melted, flooded streets and basements—and revealed bodies frozen in the drifts.
Considered to be one of the severest recorded blizzards in American history, the storm is estimated to have caused $25 million in property damages. Its ferocity claimed 400 lives, 200 of them in New York, including that of Roscoe Conklin, a former U. S. Senator, who died of pulmonary complications five days after being trapped up to his shoulders in a snow drift
